Circus Train

They weren’t funny anymore,
the three clowns I found lying dead
in my front yard this morning
when I walked out to get my newspaper.
Their bodies were clawed and half-eaten;
garish, bloody clothes, oversized shoes,
and fake red noses strewn across my lawn.

I bent down to pick up my copy
of the local rag off my driveway,
glanced at the big headline that read
CIRCUS TRAIN CRASHES:
LIONS STILL ON THE LOOSE.
I immediately jumped on one
of the elephants standing next
to my mailbox, rode it back
to the house as fast as I could.

Once inside I locked the door
behind me, walked to the kitchen
for a fresh cup of coffee. I glanced
at the sports page, grabbed a pencil,
then sat down like I do every day
to work the crossword puzzle.

 

David J. Thompson is a former prep school teacher and coach who lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He likes “The Simpsons,” Spain, postcards, and minor league baseball. His poetry/photography book Grace Takes Me is available from Vegetarian Alcoholic Press.

Judson Evans is a full-time Instructor in the Liberal Arts department at The Boston Conservatory at Berklee where he has taught a range of courses, from a Poetry Workshop on haiku, prose poetry and haibun, to a course on theories of cave art and the role of the cave in ritual and philosophy. In 2007 he was chosen by John Yau as an Emerging Poet for The Academy of American Poets. He was one of the founding members of Off the Park Press, and published work in each of its three anthologies responding to provocative contemporary painters. His most recent work has been published in (print journals) Laurel Review, Folio, Volt; 1913: a journal of forms; and Green Mountains Review, and (online journals) White Whale Review and Amethyst Arsenic. He won The Phillip Booth Poetry Award from Salt Hill Review in 2013. He has collaborated with composers, such Mohammed Fairouz, Mart Epstein, and Rudolf Rojhan, who set several of his poems to music, as well as with choreographers, dancers, musicians and other poets, including Gale Batchelder, and videographers Nate Tucker and Ray Klimek.