An atomic sprite

perched on a polished

monster-stallion

reigns over Ringling's revolving

trinity of circus attractions

 

Something the contour

of a captured crab

waving its useless pearly claws

 

From a squat body

pigmy arms

and bowlegs

with their baroque calves

curve in a bi-circular attitude

to a ballerina's ecstasy

 

An effigy of Christmas Eves

smile-cast among chrysanthemum curls

it seems a sugar angel --

while from a rose-flecked ruff of gauze

its manly legs

stamp on the vast rump of the horse

 

An irridescent speck

dripped from a rainbow

onto an ebony cloud

 

Crab-Angel I christen you

miniken of masquerade sex

 

Helen of Lilliput?

Hercules in a powder puff?

Song

"Had you been born

in regions of the Unicorn

To balance on his ivory horn

perhaps"

"Per Bacco! 'Tis an idiot dwarf

hooked to a wire to make him jump"

 

Automaton bareback rider

the circus-master

jerks

your invisible pendulence

from an overhead pulley

to your illusory

leaps in up-a-loft

 

signs

the horse

racing the orchestra

in rushing show

throw

his whimsy wire-hung dominator

 

to dart

through circus skies of arc-lit dust

Crab-Angel like a swimming star

 

clutching the tail end of the Chimera

An aerial acrobat

floats on the coiling lightning

of the whirligig

 

lifts

to the elated symmetry of Flight

 

A startled rose

whirls in the chaos of the hoofs

 

The jeering jangling

jazz

crashes to silence

 

The dwarf

subsides like an ironic sigh

to the soft earth

and ploughs

his bowlegged way

laboriously towards the exit

waving a yellow farewell with his perruque



~Mina Loy