When the carnival comes to town,
I wander the midway, dodging
toddlers sticky blue with cotton candy,
teenagers demonstrating how lewdly they can eat corn dogs.
Carnies and hawkers cackle insincere invitations,
lights flash and roll,
thick wires snake the length of the fair-transformed parking lot,
I go for the doughnuts, stay for the psychic.
Craving wisdom, clarity, recognition,
willing to pay any price to validate my existence,
I shuffle the cards, imagine a query,
cut three times, right to left,
hold my breath while a turbaned woman with crooked eyeliner
examines one palm and then the other.
I see great hardship, she breathes perhaps involving a man…it ends well.
I roll my eyes.
There’s a dog wagging its tail at you from the other side.
He’s brown and white and glad to see you.
I hated that dog, I say, pulling back my hands, looking at the cards instead.
The Fool
The Three of Swords with its thrice-pierced ichor-dripping heart
Death.
Yeah. What could she say, really?
I came for validation.
Be careful what you ask for, I guess.
Your ancestors are cheering for you, she cajoles.
They’re proud of you and want you to succeed.
What good are the dead, I want to ask,
when I’m looking for a reason to stay among the living?
I’m already invisible, I say.
I may as well join them.
I cross her palm with silver and melt into the carnival night,
consider running away with it in the morning,
But even a fly-by-night circus has standards.
© Kendra Whitfield
Kendra Whitfield lives and writes on the southern edge of the Canadian northern boreal forest. When not writing, she can be found basking in sunbeams on the back deck or swimming laps at the local pool. Her poetry has been anthologized by Epistemic Lit, Beyond the Veil Press and Community Building Art Works.
The Loch Raven Review 