an open letter to my parents Daniela Martinez

The Clown John Megow

I. The clown is proudest standing On one leg juggling his trilogy of rubber, Dancing through the air and spinning Stories of samurai with stories of British royalty with Stories of prophets.

A golden hand directs his writing, stunning Calligraphy swirls from his heart to his script, but As the golden hand relaxes its pen, the clown Rambles and rambles and rambles and rambles, Rhyming histories with fantasies with myths with civics,

And the spool he spins is his own, And the spool he spins is garbage.

II. Thread spun at wheels of iron crowns are thick As cable, safe as the bed of a farmboy, yet Lack that farmboy’s heart, lack his smugness. Give me dumpster-dived fools of fools, Mythopoeic disasters of puzzling choices.

I used to mock the clown with his contemporaries, saw him Only as an ant, never the spider that he was, Spinning a golden thread on his own. And now I sit with my gray, gray strings And yearn for that disgusting gold.