Carnival

by Jay Johnson

This is Michael Carey for Voices from the Prairie a weekly sampling from the rich soil of Iowa’s literary tradition. Today’s poem is "Carnival" by the Des Moines poet Jay Johnson. In it Ms. Johnson goes diving into an underwater world where the fish put on a show for her, a "carnival" and she becomes a young again. The more she loses herself in this other world, the more breathless she becomes, the more indescribable are the heavenly discoveries that she cannot bring to shore. It makes this Midwesterner anyway, want to take a vacation by the ocean.

Carnival

All day the sound
of the ocean pounds
against my chest as if I
were the door.
I go headlong into it.
I am salt,
the rippled sun
swimming between
bright teeth of fire
coral, and over
a school of Blue Tang.
I hang above them like
a parachutist in
free fall.
The Barracuda’s jaw
opens as if before time
there was only one word.
He is a blade
that flashes once.
I follow the Angels
to what they believe in.
The reef is their mother
with eyes of an eel.
She opens her carnival
of plumes and fans.
Slippery Dicks pivot
on their tails. Clowns
dart through parades
of Stoplight Parrots.
There are High Hats,
Yellow Damsels, tattooed
Harlequin Bass, the
fat lady Balloonfish,
Flying Gurnards, Rock
Beauties, the mermaid
the flimflam man,
and I’m five again
in the glitter
of my mother’s pearls.
The Bajans say
the ocean has no back door.
I come up for air
and realize I’m out
too far from shore,
but take one last dive –
for something irretrievable.

"Carnival" by Jay Johnson. This reading is its first publication.

For Voices from the Prairie and Humanities Iowa, this is Michael Carey hoping you continue to hear the music blooming all around you.

Jay Johnson has been published in various publications including the Des Moines Art Center’s anthology of poetry, Forty Days and Forty Nights, Iowa Woman, City View and Calapooya Collage. She has been affiliated with Metro Arts as a participating artist and on the Des Moines National Poetry Festival Steering Committee since its inception. She has also collaborated with musicians, dancers and composers. Most recently her work can been seeing gracing the sides of Des Moines city buses.