Festival Lights


We search the spring for carnivals
and find St. Charles in Toluca Lake, 
so we go, as if we could drive by 
all those neon rides etching geometry 
onto the sky. Dirt on our feet, a shattered 
rainbow of raffle tickets confetti 
the ground, and kiddie cars turn you 
in tight circles twice, punctuating
your dusk with delight. It could be 
thirty years ago: Teens in crop tops, 
goldfish in plastic bags, ribbed beer cups 
in the hands of red-faced men 
who clearly need a drink. A hotel band 
does its best with oldies as grannies
toe tap to All Shook Up. Missing 
are hot zeppoles in greasy bags 
and the Virgin Mary pinned with dollars. 
Otherwise I could be eight again: 
tight braid, mosquito bites like quarters, 
the flying swings spinning my heart out 
on a chain as fireworks become 
exclamation points sparking 
the sky with chromatic rain. 





Quarter Rides


Joy is pocket-sized. Like
quarter rides. We could ignore
the patina of grime 
on the pagodas in Chinatown 
where dusk dropped 
wet against the steamed window
of the dumpling shop
which was one bead on a string
that went herb shop, gold 
Buddha shop, bonsai shop, 
repeat until pinwheels 
in the pinwheel store turned 
to the breeze and you said 
bye, wind then blew kisses
I tried to catch. 

I carried pockets 
so full of quarters we
jingled as we headed past 
the koi fountain 
teeming with ghost fish, 
past the old smoking man, past 
the lanterns sunburned red 
to pink to the plaza
where quarter rides bucked
against the gloom,
and we paid again and again 
until the mechanical frog 
churned and galloped you
all the way past believing
we would ever find ourselves
empty-handed.  

-both poems from Listening to Records