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arrives with a mountain of scrip
that is hauled on a train into town.
Crowding out wagons of melons and peaches,
cruise black limousines chauffeured by clowns.
Ambling behind are acrobats
tossing each other like billowing
smoke, tumbling as fast as the wheels of a car
full of coal that is clacketing down
the spanking new rails of the Company's
spur by the Methodist church.
Professional gamblers follow,
shuffling serpents of cards in the air,
then a muscle man bragging
that his grip is stronger than gravity
as he squeezes lumps of coal into rhinestones.
The crowd applauds the juggler tossing
bowling balls, torches, eyeballs of snowmen,
top hats of chimneysweeps,
every seventh throw releasing
a raven into the sky.
When the Carnival King arrives
beside a smokestack on a float,
puffing his cigar and throwing kisses,
the noon whistle blows, our workers
bang hardhats and lunch buckets,
and the town goes berserk.
Even the banker stands
in the King of Coal's shadow
as the women with lignite fifes
and dark nipples pipe the townsmen
into the mines. Above ground
the playing continues all day
and all night, and when the miners
emerge at dawn, they troop
to the taverns for bock beer,
brawl and pinch the barmaids'
behinds, leaving carbon smears.
The bass drum keeps on thumping
into the mountains, raising dust
long after the parade has gone,
after the mound of scrip has been washed
to the inky creek, after the songs
have turned to coughing,
after the people have witnessed
the smudges on houses and shops,
on faces and lungs.
Donald Levering is the author of several collections of poetry, including Horsetail (Woodley Press), Outcroppings From Navajoland (Navajo Community College Press), The Jack Of Spring (Swamp Press), Carpool (Tellus), and Mister Ubiquity (Pudding House Press). His most recent release is The Fast of Thoth (Pudding House).
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