Thrush Poetry Journal
  • ABOUT
  • ARCHIVES
  • JANUARY 2023
  • SUBMISSIONS
  • AWARDS
  • MASTHEAD

Christine Gosnay  

The World’s Fair

When I’m up here thinking about my pockets, it’s mostly canon about you

This is what I was meant to wear, even if I’ve got nothing to carry

Even if my hands are busy at their carnival fidgeting

I’ve got to have some thing to hide, or at least my age to prove

My glasses are missing and the too long, didn’t read books lie

Simply everywhere, the slim ones I love to squeeze all fled or filched away

Tomorrow, you’d never know I slept with you below my tongue today

Come at me like a vandal while I’m squint-eyed in the sun

What colors will you find flushing between these old arms of mine? 

Anything you’ve become can fit there. You entire can fit there, and your fireworks 

too.

The ropes of personal freedom are coiled with absurdity

Fork your ear to the roar of the candle shop. Listen to the Catherine wheel cry.

This is how I greet you from the Ferris wheel. Now you light up your mouth and 

fly.




Christine Gosnay lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains in California, where she serves as editor of The Cossack Review. Her writing features in DIAGRAM, Beecher's Magazine, TheNewerYork, [PANK], Squaw Valley Review, and The Rumpus. She is a recent alumna of the Bread Loaf and Tin House Writers' Conferences and was a finalist for the Philip Booth Prize in 2012. 




Return to May 2014 Edition