The Midways Of That Lonesome Carnival Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Revisiting her like
A machine gun in high heels from
The closet or
The constellations: they say that they have
New heavens
All on the mind- and I look up as the frog
Princes sing
From my mother’s carport:
Can’t you hear them: singing a renaissance:
They are imperfect
But it’s Christmas and they’re singing,
Singing- Now they are all of one body
Pressed against the rebar
Of Christmas,
And though they are rusting as the neighbors
Gossip,
They are also learning how to fly-
The housewives see them, and their daughters
Dream of them:
They are flying like muses over the waves
And the heroes look up, dreaming against
Their star masts that they can save them
While the museums contain the echoes of their
Graves:
As they are still here- as they are everywhere,
Singing of a chorus that cannot contain
Them,
As the traffic steers by them, reminiscent of
Echoes- and of the entire cases of fruit
Stolen by the foxes,
As these ethereal phrases linger before the
Lips of the beasts who
Keep on jumping
Atop the midways of my lonesome carnivals.