Kristin Robertson
Portrait of Love as Carousel
Fairground organ, barnacled
with cherubs, all kiddie baroque,
and I’m going nowhere, gasping.
Marionetted up and down in a canon
of show ponies. Most worth-its
in life are cyclical: Lunar phases.
Wurlitzer beats. At every seventh second,
the blur of a single evergreen.
Circadian rhythm. In a London museum,
the Clock of the Long Now.
My horse is a fragile hundred years old
and refurbished, gentle enough
to flash me its teeth. Gums and bridle, pink
and bejeweled. It gallops Sobre
las Olas. Wind in my face, eyes blown closed.
I grip tighter, tighter the gold rope.
Kristin Robertson is the author of Surgical Wing (Alice James Books, 2017). Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, The Threepenny Review, and Five Points. She can be found at www.kristin-robertson.com.
Return to November 2019 Edition
Fairground organ, barnacled
with cherubs, all kiddie baroque,
and I’m going nowhere, gasping.
Marionetted up and down in a canon
of show ponies. Most worth-its
in life are cyclical: Lunar phases.
Wurlitzer beats. At every seventh second,
the blur of a single evergreen.
Circadian rhythm. In a London museum,
the Clock of the Long Now.
My horse is a fragile hundred years old
and refurbished, gentle enough
to flash me its teeth. Gums and bridle, pink
and bejeweled. It gallops Sobre
las Olas. Wind in my face, eyes blown closed.
I grip tighter, tighter the gold rope.
Kristin Robertson is the author of Surgical Wing (Alice James Books, 2017). Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, The Threepenny Review, and Five Points. She can be found at www.kristin-robertson.com.
Return to November 2019 Edition