For SanDiegoMomma’s Prompt Tuesday, write something inspired by this poem:
Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock
by Wallace Stevens
The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches Tigers
In red weather.
Here goes:
Sailor told her parents straight out that she intended to join the circus. Her mother rolled her eyes; her father said “Like hell you are,” but when that lanky boy with the blue-black hair took the center ring she might as well have been gone already. She was gone to another world, a world that unfolded before her that night as she sat in the dusty bleachers, watching the boy return to the rings in front of her again and again: this time juggling fire, that time riding backwards in a ring of thundering horses, and again twirling the long ends of a pearly cloth threaded high through an iron loop, spinning a leggy acrobat until her beaded costume fractured the light like fireworks. She would be his acrobat, she thought, and when they brought out the tiger she wasn’t surprised to see that he was also the one who entered the cage with a whip. The tiger snarled at the boy; the boy flashed his teeth: at the tiger, at the crowd. She imagined him after the show, rubbing the fur behind the tiger’s ears, placing his palms under its great chin, feeling the vibration of its purr quivering beneath his skin.
That night, in her room, she left her nightgown in a puddle of moonlight on the floor, slipped on her jeans and her red boots, and shimmied down the drainpipe outside her window. She’d seen the trailers glowing like lanterns behind the circus tent, heard the crickets’ song calling her to him. He was expecting her, she knew. Soon enough, she would be there.
4 Responses
June 17th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Wow. Hopefully you’ll come out to play more often.
THAT was beautiful.
June 17th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
WOW! I hope you come out to play again too!
Way to be the SAILOR!!!
June 17th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
Fuckin’ ay, muthafucka.
‘Nuff said.
July 26th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
Amazing, Stace. I think I’ll follow Sailor. I’m already there with her. It’s a cold night. But those lanterns sure look warm.
xo
Trees
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