JACK D. HARVEY - CIRCUSES

Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, Mind In Motion, Slow Dancer, The Antioch Review, Bay Area Poets’ Coalition, The University of Texas Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Piedmont Journal of Poetry and a number of other on-line and in print poetry magazines over the years.

CIRCUSES

Snowy tents,
red rusty guy wires,
billowing bellies
of brown tents,
staked to the ground.
 
Waterboy Jones
under the filtered sunlight,
green as a grape,
smart as a whip,
slips his penis
into Joan, the stable girl,
slaps pony with hand;
it runs away.
 
A couple of quick pokes,
pushing her against a pole.
 
Alone Joan,
alone on the grass
walks with Jones.
 
Sun,
press him,
press her together,
just for a while.
 
Late afternoon,
pumpkin yellow, the sun
colors the landscape;
 
hand in hand
Joan Jones walk homeward,
surfeited, but unfed,
muttering away the somehow
sadness of sexual congress,
the disappointment at the end.
 
In all ways, in all fields,
on all planes, climes,
times, tides,
whatever the place
and circumstance,
 
the circus, their circus
is done.
 
 
Published previously in the fourth issue of Cold Creek Review (Dec 2017)
​