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Eileen Favorite
Self-Portrait as Heedless Heroine

You will never ever recognize me
speeding on a roller coaster track.

My face is smeared and my hair viperine.
And doesn't that send me back to a

windowless banquet hall with fifty
cousins I did the jig. I drank sloe gin

fizz and apricot sours till I gave
the bathroom mirror a kiss. Dig the dizzy

sight of me spinning on a merry-go-
round. A metal one with a treaded floor

and a bald forked pole is all. That was love
of a certain type, with a circus type

of man. The kind who rules the carnival
and cranks the Zeppelin. He lured me

to L'Amor Express, smashed together
in the rocking pod. Our bodies whipped in

centripetal dread, he disappeared
on the third go round. Now I can no longer

stomach the rush of the Sky Dive, the Round
Up, the Quake. The downside's I'm no longer

in love—and that's a tedious place.