To carve your name onto the trophy

of the floorless. To spit-shine it for eternity.

To become not why your father drinks, but what

brings him on a chariot of tremors

to drink again. To sign up for the obituary

circus: Come see the magical, the ones

who do what others cannot.

See the Exhaust Swallower.

The Dangling Acrobat. The Blue-Finned Mermaid

who floats face down in a tank

with gills on her wrists. To stare and be stared at

forever. The unsaid word. The forgotten

dream. The poem she will

always write, and never finish.