James Babbs- Three Poems

Carnivals of My Youth

this morning

I miss the carnivals

the carnivals of my youth

the carnivals of summer

of June and July

something

I’d almost forgotten

until today

when they flooded my mind

and the flashing lights

alive with brilliant colors

the lights on every ride

spinning across the sky

and I heard music

mingling with the noise

the madness of engines

and the grinding of gears

and children laughing

with squeals of delight

and the lingering odors

of deep fried batter

lemonade shake-ups

and elephant ears

all the tents lined up in a row

spending my money

playing the ring toss game

trying to win the biggest prize

my first kiss

at the top of the ferris wheel

suspended in the air

underneath the stars

Eye of the Beholder

I’m not sure why

but she told me

she’d been a beauty queen

even took first place in

a couple of contests

but it was a long time ago

I bought her a drink

and told her it was okay

it happens to all of us

while we were drinking

I watched her reflection

in the mirror behind the bar

I was certain I could still see

traces of the beauty queen

hell

she looked pretty good to me

I told her some jokes

and liked the way she laughed

she told me

her husband had passed away

more than two years ago

he was a good man

she said

yeah I told her

I hear they’re hard to find

I told her

I’d never been married

but I’d been in love

more than a couple of times

we drank another round

and shared a few more laughs

at a certain point in the evening

I reached out my hand

and brushed the hair from her eyes

she smiled at me and

leaned her body into mine

as we held on to the night

because

we knew it couldn’t last

My Brother Smoked Merits

I remember getting cigarettes

for my brother from the diner

across the alley from our house

I must’ve been ten or eleven

maybe a little bit older than that

and I had to cross the back yard

so I always ran as fast

as I could through the dark

because

I thought the trees were monsters

and their limbs were tentacles

that kept stretching out

trying to touch me

I was on a long journey

and wasn’t sure

if I’d make it home again

and my brother always gave me enough money

for me to get myself a candy bar

or a bag of potato chips and

a can of soda pop

when I returned

I gave him back the change

and handed him the cigarettes

he smoked Merits

they had yellow and brown stripes

running at an angle

on the front of the pack

and I always liked the smell

when my brother first opened them

tearing away the cellophane

bringing a fresh one to his lips


James Babbs continues to live and write from the same small Illinois town where he grew up.  He has published hundreds of poems over the past thirty years and, recently, a few short stories.  James is the author of Disturbing The Light(2013) & The Weight of Invisible Things(2013).