Fair Meditations

by Andrew Nightingale

Big Wheel

The view is beautiful from high above the fairground lights. The shrieks and cries, below among the rides, seem almost philosophical. I can't imagine wanting to get off. But the circle draws down and in.

Carousel

These are sinister journeys, chasing down some atrocity of gilt and lights and organ music that once took place in the nursery. It was before the millstone cracked the husk. Before the top came off the medicine.

Tunnel of Love

How can I separate the tunnel from the love that sits beside me? We travel together. The tunnel is nothing without us. We leave arm in arm, scoring points off each other. The tunnel keeps our kiss.

Hall of Mirrors

I see myself multiplied and disfigured, my own private army barring my exit. I must have wanted this ritual entrapment, to be lost but contained in grim replication, because I don't want escape to be too easy.

Dodgems

A car crash can be an infinitesimal pause, a brief moment of diamond-like reflection that gradually fills with pain. So it's rehearsed for the sake of all those little deaths that end in laughter.

Ghost Train

In luminous green, skeletons lurch and clatter. Training has made them jesters, cavorting and carousing in the dark. Elsewhere I believe, in another fair, there is an exquisite display of glow-worms accompanied by a lone bamboo flute.

Candyfloss

Sentiment spins sticky clouds, congealed and dangerous, a fibrous nausea. It now becomes possible to assess what kind of transformation I have wrought. Sweetened bile marks the pavement like a residue.

Big Wheel

The guard bar drops and locks shut. The carriage swings. We leave in small steps, rising by degrees but never out of sight, to a void enshrined by the lights below.