Jim Everhard

 

“The mad clowns have finally put their false faces to rest.”
– Ron Acker

Calliope horses
have broken their legs,
and the circle is broken,
And the music stops,
as the children, holding back
their tears, are leading them away
to be shot. And beautiful women
are weeping on the outskirts
of the cave-in of the Hall of Mirrors,
surveying the rubble as if it was
the grave of a diamond mine,
as if they could hear their lovers,
below, giving up.
And, yes, even the mad clowns
have finally put their false faces
to rest, the tiny car in which they live,
abandoned in its shell of rust.
And the circus lies down in its ash,
exhausted as a phoenix
that has risen from too many fires.
Somewhere, someone’s life is folding
like a tragic poker hand.
Someone is sleeping in sawdust.

 

Jim Everhard is the author of a book of poems, Cute (1982). He grew up in Northern Virginia, served in the US Navy from 1966 to 1970, and spent the next eleven years working on a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from George Mason University. He lived in Dupont Circle, Washington D.C. through the 1980s, until his early death from AIDS in 1986.