The September sun set two hours ago.
Gewgaw hawkers in canvas rows smell
of spindrift, salt-water taffy, and rancid grease.
Harsh white filaments strobe and stutter
inside bulbs strung like interrogation
from every ride, ring toss and dog stand.
Jantzen Beach is lit like a rogue holiday.
Daddy hands me a towering bouffant of pink
spun sugar, tearing chunks of cotton cumulus
with his meaty hands, unraveling the gift down
to an anemic, bald paper cylinder.
I am eight, immaculate, and likewise diminished
like wrack, or pocket lint, a fledgling
next to Daddy. Every time
I remember Daddy
it is just he and I; my
siblings home sick
or dead.
He says, “Don’t be a chicken.”
It is a tottering, rickety-rackety, click
and clang of wood, metal and screams crescendo,
decrescendo in call and answer.
At the roller coaster arc and axis and spin
women’s hair riles like eel grass subject
to brutal, fluctuating tides, or
like small slithering snakes seething a furious roil.
My knees clack. A wind-blown leaf,
red as any omen, catches in my sock.
There is no demarcation between fear and awe.
Even a neglectful parent hesitates
before leaving an eight-year old unattended
in the deep dusk.
If I don’t go, he can’t go. Spoilsport.
Big-Baby. Thumb-sucker.
Gutless. Chicken.
Clammy salt-water air and sweat,
the familiar stale beer close, and in the distance
a hint of some other child’s pee.
We lift, and I mute screams -fast
forward to forever.
Bruised by the side wall, bruised belly,
the seat guard rail, thrown against Daddy’s bulk
and back, like a pink gingham ball in scrimmage.
Wasn’t I fearless? Was I not brave? For you?
After, Daddy says “I want my own bumper car.”
Two boys bump me into a corner
and Daddy whizzes by and whizzes by chortling.
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