13 Ways of Looking at a Circus April 2014 | Page 16

The lions, tiger, and elephants
Can give you temporary joy
Because when it’s all over
You’re revealed to the world
Joanna

O skinny men flipping in the big top
Do you image monkeys in the jungle
Flipping in the air towards you?
Jalen

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three
blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the
autumn winds.
It was a small part of the
pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a
blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

I know noble tightrope walkers
And how brave they are.
But I know too, that if he falls
His life will be over.
Kevin

I know people
And what they do,
But I know too
What they can do.
Nate

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable
rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do y