When the circus came to play at the bar
Stacey nudged me to say
“He’s looking at you, girl!”
I sidled over
to the Tallest Man in the World
and tugged on his pant leg.
Our caravan took off via Oklahoma to fields of windmills
spelling “help” in semaphore, into a bird
(its epitaph a faint spiderweb on the windshield),
among the tumbleweeds and past ghost-towns, to the eternal
Californian holidays and back again:
Texas in the snow, Nashville and he liked the way I danced.
Crowds looked at us in awe, hands over their mouths.
In Arizona we drank tequila with water in plastic cups,
stopped in Lordsburg where they gave him a crown at check-in
and never asked for it back.
I sang to him, I rubbed his sore feet,
I climbed a ladder to kiss his face.
After some months he wanted me to sign a contract, so I did:
Cynthia, Of Course
He smiled down at me as I looped the Y with his quill pen.
He said, “You’re in this circus forever,”
then something happened in the sky: he was twelve feet tall,
he was nine feet tall,
he was six-and-a-half feet tall and outside a truck stop, clutching some juice.
His hair flickered orange-red-orange in the sunlight while under his red glasses
seethed his strange colorless eyes.
“Do you love me?” he checked.
The sun was hot and I felt exhilarated. I said “Yes.”
Stacey nudged me to say
“He’s looking at you, girl!”
I sidled over
to the Tallest Man in the World
and tugged on his pant leg.
Our caravan took off via Oklahoma to fields of windmills
spelling “help” in semaphore, into a bird
(its epitaph a faint spiderweb on the windshield),
among the tumbleweeds and past ghost-towns, to the eternal
Californian holidays and back again:
Texas in the snow, Nashville and he liked the way I danced.
Crowds looked at us in awe, hands over their mouths.
In Arizona we drank tequila with water in plastic cups,
stopped in Lordsburg where they gave him a crown at check-in
and never asked for it back.
I sang to him, I rubbed his sore feet,
I climbed a ladder to kiss his face.
After some months he wanted me to sign a contract, so I did:
Cynthia, Of Course
He smiled down at me as I looped the Y with his quill pen.
He said, “You’re in this circus forever,”
then something happened in the sky: he was twelve feet tall,
he was nine feet tall,
he was six-and-a-half feet tall and outside a truck stop, clutching some juice.
His hair flickered orange-red-orange in the sunlight while under his red glasses
seethed his strange colorless eyes.
“Do you love me?” he checked.
The sun was hot and I felt exhilarated. I said “Yes.”
Kaylyssa Quinn lives in Atlanta, Georgia. Her poems have been published in Capsule Stories, Mineral Lit Mag, tinywords, Furious Season, Six Sentences and in partnership with Hades Wool.