13 Ways of Looking at a Circus April 2014 | Page 24

The tigers are jumping
And roaring loudly
And are full of energy
The finale must be near.
Jalen

The cheers start to fade
You can hear footsteps
In the background
Some still cheer with
A round of applause
But I know the act
Is soon over
Allen

Two more slices of pizza
It’s almost gone
It just disappeared
Jordan

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.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

It’s only a matter of time
Before the unreal is gone.
Alex

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of
sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

The crowd goes wild
The end is getting closer
Vanessa

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be
flying.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.