Last Day of Magic
For example, when you take a funhouse
seriously, you’ll want mirrors to keep
the world inside the glass from falling out
like a labryinth into the future or the past
for all to see—the ceiling, the floor, the plywood
with splinters spliced into planks
that join the festival
moon with its halo of haze—
you’ll eventually want to stroll through
the mirrors and meet the clowns
unicycling along sawdust paths and juggling
seltzer bottles and bowling pins.
You’ll ask the coulrophobes, why not
dream of the funhouse
falling into a sideshow and a ring toss
and the never-ending carousel.
You’ll want to walk over to Water Street.
The Rotary Club will sell you a funnel cake.
Go ahead, try a mallet
at the Whac-A-Mole and walk
with the living folk into the haunted house
we keep filling up
even if we are a small town.
You’ll want to wait until 9 o’clock,
when fireworks blush the air over the canal works—
roman candles and parachutes, bengal lights and aerial shells
will rocket from the barge
sitting north of the locks.
Pretty soon the thought will strike you
halfway convinced that H.P. Lovecraft had lived here,
you’ll bet five bucks
he loved the cars idling under the bridge,
the winters when slush finally thawed
and earth gushed green and the canal
flowed and the young girls
with their melancholy eyes, opaque as the boredom
they wear like a prom dress,
filled the sidewalks
with bicycles and Segways. You’ll want to take
the path with the tourists
stepping back from skateboarders
crossing George Bailey Bridge,
where exactly 1,000 yellow ducks drop
into the algae-mottled canal
and you’ll want to gather with the rest of us
to cheer for the ducks racing
in what could be the world’s
slowest Derby or Preakness,
and you’ll remember it for a long time.
Myth and Fairytale
A friend once told me his wife
passed away without a mark— as if sleeping;
her body perfect, tranquil and slumped
as if telling a story
quietly to herself inside.
Before his wife died,
we already had ourselves
to see by candlelight in cold places,
where we were close enough
we often spoke.
I thought about that man
in the February of this year,
and his wife. Who’s to say I never
go back to the old stories
I thought I’d left behind.
The man whose wife died and I
spoke while driving
on an icy road going to church.
We found ourselves young enough once
to take in the comfort
of the snowy countryside.
Ours was a story that began
once upon a time. “Let’s go,” he said,
“let’s leave this cold February
and live our best life—
and he hung up the phone—
Bob Haynes
Bob Haynes lives in Seneca Falls, New York. His poems have appeared in North American Review, Nimrod, New Letters, Poetry Northwest, Rattle, Bellingham Review, Lake Effect, Poet Lore, Cimarron Review, Natural Bridge, Louisville Review, and Louisiana Literature, as well as featured on the Verse Daily website. Poems have also been reprinted in anthologies Cabin Fever (Word Words) and Kansas City Out Loud (BkMk Press), and in the poetry textbook Important Words (Boynton/Cook Heinemann). His latest book, The Grand Unified Theory (Kansas City: Paladin Contemporaries). He currently teaches online writing and visual rhetoric, and poetry workshops at Arizona State University.
