Coney Island

The smell is like bitter rubber

or A-B-C gum stamped into the concrete:

the A-Train that takes us to Coney Island.

A woman wraps polka-dot viscose around her face,

eyes shift down to the floor

as her children pass the time with leap frog,

legs slick with a continual bend and snap.

Every freak show has a clown

that looks like a checkerboard,

triangle tears slowly sweating off his face,

paint surely ready to bubble like a fried egg.

Sally does burlesque on the beach,

tassels are glittering against sun-damaged skin

and distract the men on Steeplechase Pier,

who bait their hooks with a bloodworm,

swollen clitella tempts the bluefish that

fill their pails, fins stack up like poker chips.

It is 85 degrees in April, the gulls

are covering the shoal and how odd it is that
a fat brown bottle washed to the shore

is what we can relate to the most.

by Sarah Watson

Words In Motion 2014