Circus   We love the show — first come the clowns in little cars and funny hats and outsized pants, all silly antics and slapstick, then pretty girls, sequins and glitter, elephants doing their elephant thing, and lion tamers, fire eaters, exotic dancers, monster trucks, mud wrestling — everything’s the same as before and we love the noise, the con games and the multicolored smoke, the live ammunition, the blood that looks so real, the fearless young trapeze artistes who dive headlong into nothing, the spinning wheel of chance, ratcheting, ratcheting . . . while pickpockets and panhandlers work the crowd — lawyers, hookers, bankers, beer wallahs with thick indecipherable accents. The Boy King steps forward at last — beloved ringmaster, conjurer, lord of the show. Wild cheers, joyful chants. He waves his hands — we sing the victory song. He points to a child in the crowd — his anointed one! Our lamb for the altar! But first: the demolition derby, an ecstasy of steel slamming steel — our hero takes the prize, a bishop’s mitre on his head as he emerges from the wreckage and blesses us all because he knows we’re in on it. We surge forward when the flashbombs ignite and balls of fire billow forth from the very bowels of hell, engulfing him — the Man, the Mission — and then he’s gone. We pump our fists and howl for more, more, more! We paid a lot for this.     © Michael Fleming Brattleboro, Vermont April 2023