In Miniature, by Heather McCabe

In Miniature
​
after Roy Arnold’s Circus Parade, carved 1925-1955 
 
Thirty gray elephants stroll two by two. Their skin
velvet with cleft folds carved by hand. Once,
I was the rhino in Just So Stories, frustrated at the looseness
of my flesh, pulling on a man’s oversized blazer under
hot stage lights, under the boughs of a palm.
 
Astride dusty palominos, rough riders grasp at the reigns 
and an enclosed float drifts by, a seal lying still 
next to a puddle glimmering with metallic paint. Noses
pressed to glass, our fingers smudged over the lumbering bison,
awed by their horns as though we had not killed them. 
 
The circus queens follow the lady equestrians, their white
steeds circling in the prowling tiger’s wake. A feathered cap
rustles under an imagined hand. Trust me, I would have been 
an excellent boy scout because there’s something ticking 
in the back of my mind that begs me to be prepared. 
 
In the middle of the endless march, Mother Goose poses,
mythic, like Santa or Sinbad the Sailor. Horses pull Roman
chariots, history as exotic as the carved wooden men
done up in turbans and feathered headdresses. Someone held
a chisel to that arm, a paintbrush to the apple of that cheek.
 
A cowgirl in white leads the parade, right fist curled around 
a jutting flagpole, Old Glory wearing golden fringe. What else 
could be so American? Like, Look at all that we’ve wrought,
like my mother on the couch that summer day
saying, Didn’t you know this was all temporary?
 
Heather McCabe

​Heather McCabe is a writer and artist from South Burlington, VT. A graduate of Ohio State University’s MFA, she writes about fresh water, friendship, and the politics of attention.