Carnival Lights
This horizontal collapsing Y,
almost capital T street light
can’t help but resemble that thing
inserted into a womb
whose hard cord retrieval
pricks long-penised men,
then bright hoped pink
sad Bamboo Restaurant
strip mall Siamese half, empty things sold,
dirty edged windows, sun faded display of
Mickey Mouse and ‘50s Santa Claus tall plastic molds.
Passing Jersey plated white stretch limo tortures
saying it all, gassing up
where newspaper wearing wind caped weeds
and elbowed gutter drains, old stomping grounds
flattened, stopped up ghost hollowed aches –
strange mix of small centered fun wrapped in mostly hurts,
like the ‘60’s hard candy’s wider white round about
little Christmas trees,
caught spinning within the cement trucks move forward
and traffic refused passage
through Piss-scat-away!
When John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band’s
“Boardwalk Angel” becomes hot aired ocean inhale
triggered Kegel response
with its run for last second jump or dive,
pulling everything behind into
over your head excited young escapes, all green water.
Hoping the drive back toward Pennsylvania would erase,
those caught in throat anxious breaths,
relaxed between two breasted comfort without need of a bra:
mountains.
Mushrooming silver silos,
I say “fat dicks”
He says “big tits,”
followed by their laughter!
Too early for Kohler Farm’s yellow/white ginghamed
sweet corn fresh, let down…even as we salivate
Celtic sea salt and Irish butter,
mixed with rained on cow shit.
Trying to disappear 60 years of veneered living
into wherever those bottom of an iron hot
dark tar street jumps for cooler concrete sidewalks went,
in need of the EZ Pass booths move through us
climbing sand steps under dangled toes,
carousel rounded air lifts.
© Maureen Scanlon
Maureen Scanlon grew up in New Jersey, whose influence can be seen and felt in many of her poems. Life has taken her to times in Connecticut, Florida, and Massachusetts; she now calls home the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. Maureen‘s work has been published in a number of New England journals, and she was a featured reader at the venerable Stone Soup Poetry Readings. She has also hosted Amergin, a poetry reading series.
The Loch Raven Review 