Virginia Konchan

CAROUSEL

I should have studied metallurgy
in the carceral attention economy.
No one has the other currency:
the price is wrong, until paid.
I want to be indissociable, like a
corporation with limited liability,
but also like trinitarian theology;
the mysterious third person was,
I feel, not adequately explained.
Disambiguation is overrated,
and I’m done asking whether
what I’ve done to myself
and what others have done
to me is the same question.
Abstraction, representation,
wanted dead or resurrected:
surely you’ve seen posters
around town, cher lecteur.
I look into the open mouth
of the carousel’s lacquered
horse, hypnotically sway.
What is the secret word,
or is it a command—
Arise, Lazarus, ándale?
If death is the material,
I can’t grasp the material.
To looped circus music,
an orchestrated concerto,
I spur my horse anyway.

VIRGINIA KONCHAN is the author of four poetry collections: Bel Canto (Carnegie Mellon), Hallelujah Time (Véhicule), Any God Will Do (Carnegie Mellon), and The End of Spectacle (Carnegie Mellon); as well as the short story collection Anatomical Gift (Noctuary Press) and four chapbooks. She is coeditor of the craft anthology Marbles on the Floor: How to Assemble a Book of Poems (University of Akron Press). Her poems have appeared in The Believer, The New Republic, and The New Yorker.