cirque du sorry

There was a tent on the corner of Main and Swift,

billowing red and white parading as the brick coliseum

where our basketball team suffered a crushing defeat,

108 to 3. Our MVP ran out crying—if the crowd hadn’t been busy

shrieking, they would have seen sweat and tears mix with

mascara. No one said the M stood for manly.

The next day, every newspaper in our city and theirs crowed

about our mascot seen on a plane to Tijuana.

Flailing Turkey Flees Nest on Account of Failure.

Our town was split between tears of laughter and tears

of tears. Me, I couldn’t think about anything but this:

how lucky that Mexico isn’t Thanksgiving-ing.

I pictured drug lords chasing down our Flailing Turkey,

and cutting it open to find a scared man in a sweaty suit.

Gobblegobble, oh dear God, please don’t shoot me.

The men with their guns, expecting cocaine, find instead,

a cracked up man. I wonder if sorrow flavors poultry well?

What about desperation? Panic? Regret?

The flavor of a mourning town stuck to my tongue

like some decade old, specialty wine

and drunk off the displeasure

of a good fifteen thousand,

I booked us tickets to the circus

and hoped for another show.

Leaping from ring to ring, in several high-heeled bounds,

you growled at the tigers and ogled the acrobats,

and bruuaahh‘d with kids making shadow elephants

with their arms as trunks and trunks as backs.

The glow in your eyes told me you’d be just fine,

and you might enjoy it and I was truly, a little bit disappointed.

Then they ushered us back to our seats,

and you waved your little souvenir booklet and bragged

about all the signatures you’d gotten and how Hanna,

the tightrope walker who once lived in Ukraine,

was a “snazzy kinda chick” and how you’d gotten along so well

because you could both pick up small things with your toes.

The lights dimmed and the show started, and you,

wide-eyed, did not look at me once.

You hadn’t ever looked so happy in all our time together,

and I could tell you thought I’d done good to buy those tickets

by the way that you squeezed my hand and ooh-ed and ahh-ed,

and fawned even more when the lights came up.

One would think that I’d just given you the world.

But on my part, I was just a little sorry,

because you were spinning like the acrobats, but in awe and love

and your eyes were sparkling in a way I had not intended.

Because I really thought that you’d be scared of clowns,

and I wanted to see another show.