As yet unpublished, but not entirely unpublishable, I hope. -- Jerry Miller
"ProsePoem: Games of Chance"
The Card the Weight-and-Fortune-Telling Machine Gave Me After
Cheating Me Out of My First Penny:
"You are a soldier-boy. You weigh 175 pounds, are 5 feet, 10 inches tall,
and have only one leg (which, of course, you already knew). You lost the other one in Vietnam.
"Soon you will meet a beautiful girl, who will also be 5 feet 10 inches
tall, will weigh 127 pounds, and will laugh when you lose your balance. She eventually will leave you for a drummer-boy
with three legs.
"Very little is fair, in love or war, on in the nature of things.
"This card is made from recycled paper.
"Have a nice day."
Copyright 1998 by Jerry Miller ©
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"ProsePoem: Fair Today, Gone Tomorrow"
The midway's red carpet rolls out like the tongue of a magic frog or a
streetwalker.
It licks along the gravel path beneath the feet of the county fair's best
prospects -- the young boys with shining sunfish faces, the young girls with cotton-candy hair and nothing to lose but the
last breaths of their giggly girlhoods. They step onto the midway carpet, their hands interlocked and innocence tattooed onto
their faces, and, like flies on the sticky tongue of a frog, are pulled into the alley to bid on the contraband watches
inside the midway's overcoat.
They walk the throat of temptation, straight down the gauntlet of men and
women armed with darts, baseballs, and airport-beacon eyes. Silver tongues dance around them like belly dancers.
"Hey, win a prize every time!"
"Knock 'em over, win a prize. How 'bout it, podner?"
"Hey, Slick, come over here . . . "
The carnies stand along the roadside, adversaries in a morality play. They
hold out their candy-coated promises and cross their fingers behind them.
The only progress these open-faced pilgrims make is from one land of fancy to
the other, from the cheap prizes under the counter to the overstuffed allegories hanging from the ceiling with glass Korean eyes.
They go from town to town, from State Fair Raceway to Penny Falls, from Duck Pond to Bowl 'Em Over, met always by the open palm of
the midway's welcoming committee.
"Hey," the master of one midway Welcome Wagon beckons, wagging an index finger like a
highway worker's flag. "Hey . . . "
The wayfarers who stop hear a record that skips like a broken promise.
"Every balloon you bust, I give you three coupons. The more coupons, the
better the prize," a carny promises.
"How many for that?" the bare-faced boy asks, pointing at a stuffed pink elephant high
above the bulletin board of balloons.
"Oh, twenty-five or twenty-six, we'll worry about that when you get a little closer."
Balloons burst like overworked lungs.
"How many coupons you got now?"
"Twenty-five."
"Okay, only nine more and you get the elephant."
The rides set back from the main road gambol on, going nowhere. The round cages of the
"Rock & Roll" tumble on, dice on a neon crap table. The "Rock-O-Plane" is a wheel of fortune with the winners trapped in its spin.
On the other side of the road, a man gives a blue balloon a helium transfusion. He has
about the only sure thing a carnival midway offers -- until it lapses from a child's hand and becomes an orange cloud.
The midway sticks out its tongue at the bobbing balloon and taunts it toward the exits.
"Excuse me, you with the hat, can I ask you . . . ,' presumes a young woman, popping
out of a hope chest full of teddy bears.
Old men on stools hold court over a box of rubber balls and mathematical sleight-of-hand.
"Get fifty stars and you win a big prize."
A dollar bill changes owners. "Now, you only need ten more."
Dollar bills are held out like doggie treats, trying to tempt stuffed dogs the size of
mules across the counter. "Only five more stars and you've got it. Another dollar and it's yours."
The money goes down the drain like a morning shower. The carnies may shave the odds, but
the transaction is fair. "They come to us with their hands in their pockets," one seasoned carny says, wearing the smile of a gambler with
a pat hand.
The pilgrims walk to the end of the red carpet, slinking away like deportees. The stick of
experience has written a new message in their cow-chip faces.
The tongue of the carnival midway has licked them clean, like ice cream cones. It curls back
again, laughs inside its teeth, and opens its mouth again.
"Hey, Slick, a prize every time," it says, as seductive and hungry as ever.
* * * * *
The thousand eyes of the night look down on the county fair, a parent saying
its goodnights to a weary child. The child, eyes sagging like tent flaps, flashes a neon smile and crawls under the covers.
The fair lays its head down on a pillow of straw. The lights in the show barn
go out like someone has hit it in the head with a club. The police dragnet of sleep is moving in on the fairgrounds, crawling in
under the cover of the night and the trees.
The food stands at the mouth of the midway have turned down their fires, sent the thick
smell of cooking to its room. Four ears of corn lie still on a grill, safely tucked in their husks for the night.
The crowds of fairgoers slip quietly away from the midway, parents leaving a dozing
child's bedroom. They leave the night-light on.
The fair empties out the way an hourglass does, slow and so steady that no one notices
until there is only a little sand left. A few more grains trickle out the exits, and the sky winks its countless eyes.
The fair finally is left to a few stragglers -- and the carnies. The midway workers stay at their
stations until the last pocket of loose change jingles off to bed. They have good ears for such things.
Many of the carnies sit or lean against the fronts of their brightly lighted booths, hanging
onto Coke cups that haven't had Coke in them for at least an hour. "Have some," a carny offers, the whiskey sloshing around his words as if
they were ice cubes.
They are gypsies with one foot nailed to the ground and no place to go until next week, anyway.
They pass secret notes among themselves, whispering on the wind in a little-known language. Someone is in jail or a shill is prowling the
midway -- unless you know the code, you can't be sure.
The midway starts into its bedtime routine. The eyelids of tents close, teddy bears and pink
elephants dancing on strings behind them. Lights flash out, stars bursting as they enter the atmosphere.
The flaps and overnight storefronts come down. "Roll On, Tampa Bay Bucs," advertises the shut-eyed
front of a corn dog stand.
Light peers around the edges of some of the flaps, children determined to stay awake, reading comic
books under the covers. The carnies come out of hiding, visiting, gossiping like relatives at a family reunion.
At one end of the fair, just at the edge of the night, the Astroliner ride sits unattended in its
spotlight, a missle napping before morning launch.
A quiet, almost solemn darkness falls over the midway, the chatter of carnies running beneath it like
a TV laugh track. The village of overnighters is getting drowsy.
Only the Zipper ride is wide awake, its neon eyes flashing as it twirls in the trees on a test run. Carnies
and the final one or two stragglers gather and warm themselves by its campfire.
The room of the played-out midway goes dark, the Zipper its bloodshot night-light.
In the stables beyond, pigs lie asleep in their pens, like pairs of sausages on a breakfast plate waiting
for the company of fried eggs. Cattle low from the far end of the stables, children protesting the mandate of sleep.
And it all nods into the black silence of overnight death. The stark white lights among the trees kiss the
fairgrounds goodnight. The last cars to leave, their twin flashlights making pinholes in the distant darkness, close the door behind them. And the child sleeps.
Copyright 1998 by Jerry Miller ©
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