skonen_blades

I am half-umbrella and three-quarters curtains. The soles of my shoes are made from the floorboards of the stage I’m going through. I’m a three-ring circus in a bunk bed. I’m a good mood tied around a candy cane quivering in an arrow hole. Pull back my eyelids to see if I’m sleeping soundly. I am show-business finger-pistols at a funeral.

I am enjoying this brief respite from death. I am a wild goose in a travel cocoon swinging through eighty assumed years of living like the pendulum of a grandfather clock. I am the arc of the covenant. I am a blow-up doll that blowed up real good.

I asunagize. I’m starry. I want to make it down to you. Onwards and upwards. Back and to the left. I can’t fine the words.

You know men better than I do. All I know is that I am not all men but I don’t know if I’m wrong about that.




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When I was a little boy, I used to think that balloon animals were magical and alive.

Every time I saw one getting made, I could only think that it must be really painful for that balloon to blossom into consciousness as it was being twisted violently in the hands of a clown.

I pictured a world where all the balloon-creatures lived. One giant balloon-planet big enough to have gravity. Gamboling balloon sheep and poodles bounding in giant arcs over the colorful shapes of bristling sausage bushes and snake-race blue balloon-rivers. Giant balloon-birds and clouds hovering up in the air. I picture half-finished abstract balloon-creatures rolling along in slow motion like disfigured tumbleweeds.

I pictured the constant low-level squeaking mixing in the air with the smell of talcum powder and rubber.

The colours would have been at home in a tropical coral reef or a bag of candy.

Sharp edges and fire did not exist.

I guessed that Earth-bound balloon creations must dream of that place like we dream of heaven. I figured that the animals that were filled with helium and rose up into the sky could get back home. The rest were chained here forever with me and other children.

It must have felt horrible to be filled with the dank hung-over breath of a clown and wrestled into life only to be rooted here. I always felt that it was my duty to hoard the animals in my room and keep them entertained until they shriveled away to nothing over the year. Every carnival or fair that we went to, I begged my parents to buy as many as possible.

After a while, they knew to steer me clear of clowns and balloons.

I’ve always seen the act of creating life in balloon form to be an act of cruelty.



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I grew up in a circus. I ran away to join the city.

Thinking about the circus, I remember the starry-eyed, just-turned teens that we’d inevitably gather from the cities we passed through. Small towns, mostly. They were simple kids who wanted to escape from the drudgery of back seats, small classrooms, ignorant minds, and parent’s greedy wishes.

They soon found out that driving tent stakes into the ground, feeding tigers and shoveling elephant shit into wheelbarrows was no picnic. The transient boys would try a few moves on the contortionist girls or the trapeze ladies or the conjoined twins but they'd get rebuked. Harshly, if necessary, by Kristo the strongman and the clowns.

It was only a matter of time before the police caught up with us a few towns down the line and took the adolescent away, tears running down his or her dirty cheeks. We pleaded ignorance, the cops let us off, all was well. Maybe a bribe or a beating and we were on our way. It was a cycle.

Sometimes, though, one of boys or girls that joined us would never be looked for. Their parents wouldn’t even alert the authorities. They’d stay with us for months. If they managed to not steal or run away for two years, we’d let them become part of the family. There’d be an initiation party and we’d grow one member stronger.

Some of the kids that joined us never dimmed. Whether they stayed or were collected, you could see that they were thrilled to be here every second. Idiots.

We were like gypsies, really. Some family ties but mostly a collection of folk tied together with thief’s honour and frontier justice. I was one of the few kids there who had been born on the road and had grown up on the fairground.

There was nothing fair about it, in my opinion.

I couldn’t wait to leave this place.

My dad was a skinny mute. He was one of the mimes. My mom was a tightrope-walking juggler. She said that she did literally what most people did figuratively.

I didn't know what she meant by that.

I say that they were my parents but I was raised by the entire troupe, including the men that smoked, played poker and hammered tent pegs.

I lost my virginity to one of those men when I was twelve, which is a flowery way of stating what happened. I had an eyepatch, an alcohol problem, and a twenty-a-day habit by the time I was sixteen. Just other examples of why I hated this traveling freak show.

I heard tales from the city kids that I’d strike up conversations with. Stories of laws, stories of knowing hundreds of people for years, stories of becoming familiar with one’s surroundings.

Once and for all, outside Cincinnati, I packed some clothes and fifteen dollars from under my mother’s bed into a handkerchief and just like in the talkies, I tied it around the end of a stick and headed into town.

That was twenty years ago. No one came looking for me. I know hundreds of people now, I am familiar with my surroundings, and I depend on the law to protect me. I am married and I have children and a career.

Now I know what my mother meant.

But I don't miss the circus in the slightest.



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He was a crowclown. Small dark eyes glittered like a bird’s deep in the hollows of his face. Six more and he would have looked like a spider. Big black circles surrounded his eyes. The end of his nose was a ravaged black that looked like frostbitten flesh. The black around his mouth was perfectly edged but still looked like a stain. It wasn’t makeup. It looked tattooed. It looked dyed. A mirrored clown make-up rorshach birthmark on his face. He had little triangles above and below his eyes.

Black matted hair sloped down around his ears like Victorian royalty. His ruffled collars looked ludicrous above his black and white thick-striped oversized long-sleeved shirt. He was wearing starched black overalls that were dirty from the climb from his grave. His oversized shoes sparkled with an obsidian finish. Sharp fingernails of polished jet poked out from the fingertips of his ragged black gloves.

He was a circus raven. He was a zombie mime. He was a shaman from the crow tribe of juggling Iriquois. He was a spirit of revenge. He was a Hell-oquin.

Back from the deadpan.

He perched up in the ceiling ropes and surveyed the floor of the big top’s center ring. The monochrome pattern of his clothes kept him hidden in the play of light amongst the rope’s shadows like a tiger’s stripes in tall grass. If one did see him, one could be forgiven for thinking that it looked he was at the center of a web.

Every circus has one. They are unsettling but necessary.

They infest the rooftops of clowntown like pigeons.

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The elegant muscles of the tigerclown are bands of steel as it makes its way down the main tent pole to where I’m held. There’s an almost mechanical ticking to its subterranean growl. Its claws slowly pluck and sink their way down the vertical oak like it’s creeping across a hardwood floor. Its grace is frightening to behold. Her bright white fur is patterned with polka dots and triangles. Her bright blue and green stripes criss cross in a deadly plaid that mix with the circus shadows in the abandoned tent as she slithers gleefully down. Slowly, she descends. I’m shaking. There’s another deep deadly purr and a second jestercat pads out from the shadows. This one’s a deep panther black with white zebra stripes. Its bright red nose is supposed to be comical but I can’t help seeing it as a blood stained snout. It has a bright gold earring. There are white triangles above and below its cold yellow eyes.
I’m twitching and staked out in the center ring. There’s Pedro tied to the seesaw over in ring one and there’s Jake chained to the low hanging trapeze in ring two. We all look at each other with the wild eyes of sinking horses and mute sweaty faces. We’ve been caught and it’s all over except for the screaming. And there will be lots of screaming.
I hear the soft pad of patient feet. There’s another harlequin hellcat with glowing white eyes looking at me from under the empty seats. It pads out into the light and I can see its little party hat and ruffled collar. Its retractable claws have razored through his little kitty clown shoes. There’s nothing funny about these animals. They’re bigger than bears from where I’m sitting. They circle.
A feline mime comes forward, low to the ground and teeth bared in a silent snarl. My bladder lets go. They seem to be concentrating on us one a time. It looks like I’m first.
A cougar with a top hat jauntily comes out the haunted black, tail swishing and bright plastic flower bobbing. She licks her long teeth and looks to her friends before looking back at me and standing quite still in anticipation.
Punch and Jaguar, the Bengal buffoon, Calico cutups, and Patches the Maneater. Alley cats the size of ponies with a raspy taste for meat surround us. We’ve been smeared with blood and cotton candy to further entice them. I can hear more behind. Laffy Leopard and the Lion King, I think. I swear to God they’re smiling. They’re waiting for their cue.
I give it to them.
I scream.



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