Poetry · Crab-Angel

Crab-Angel

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

pygmy arms

and bow legs

with their baroque calves

curve in a bi-circular attitude

to a ballerina’s exstacy

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 iridescent speck

dripped from a rainbow

onto an ebony cloud

Crab-Angel I christen you

minnikin of masquerade sex

Helen of Lilliput?

Hercules in a powder puff?

“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 bare-back rider

the circus-master

jerks

your invisible pendulence

from an over-head 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 bow-legged way

laboriously towards the exit

waving a yellow farewell with his perruque