From Dead Carnival

by Mark Wallace

Chapter One

In the carnival, the dead are dancing. Whose dead are they? Who must help them die?

The carnival can be seen, barely, from the new highway across the desert. But only if you're looking closely will you see more than a brief darkness, a shadow where the bright blank emptiness of the sun should be. Not looking, maybe you will do no more than duck your head, startled by a premonition, left only with the feeling that, though you can't remember where or when, there's something you've forgotten, something you have done, that follows you like a stranger. Then the highway will take you up again, unfurling across the desert as if you're riding into the sun, as if the ridge that strikes back at you with circles of light is the fulfillment that will take you away from yourself. But it is only the road to Reno, or a thousand other places where the stakes are low, and destiny is no more profound than a slot machine. Soon you will forget the feeling that there's something you've forgotten, although once or twice you will push a sweaty hand across your forehead, as if without being aware of it, you're trying to force something from your mind.

But if you take the old desert road, the one the new highway has left for dead, you'll see the shadow is a field of fences, from which a few leaning spires rise. You will know the rows of buildings are empty. You will see the high roll of a Ferris wheel, the wild curves of a roller coaster. Nothing will move. You will be able to picture the rooms, their doors opening away into other rooms while dust catches in your throat. Stairs will circle down, how far do they go, circling like that, are you dizzy in the sun that blisters your windshield? Does someone stand at the base of those stairs, hand on the railing, grinning, welcoming you to play? How long have you danced, bony aristocratic fingers on your arm, while you think how many parts of you have died?

Once, a woman coming out of a temperance meeting pointed across the street at a drunk sitting back against a wall of a store in the little desert town. Look, she said to her friend, isn't it awful, don't you see it has to end? The friend said yes, but looked away quickly, seeing that the man against the wall was her father.

What gives birth to the dead? Yes, a funny contradiction there, but even the dead don't start out dead, they have to be born to it somehow. There are the obvious lineages, but what about the others? What human spiders drew in the air outside the windows of the hospital? What beautiful men and women laughed loudly, warmly, at a gathering, voices catching in the wires? What poets cut their words on eyes? What hate for trees, what hate for clothing, what hate for wasting jobs that clack their lies across machines? What young woman sat in the sunlight, hating herself?

The dead don't have a stable aura. The dead are never the same. I don't remember that day, but it must have been ambivalent. The dead can make you laugh at decay, lips curling back from their teeth as they talk about their years in the navy, trying to prove their manhood. Dead for twenty years and still trying to prove their manhood. I respect the dead, so I never honor them. Honor the living, but only because there's no reason to. If you want, you can dance with the dead, their hair falling lightly on your shoulders, their outrageous lies lying lightly on your ears. Do you think being dead will make you more truthful? The dead are vain, cowardly, courageous, rambunctious, displaced, recalcitrant, disturbed. The dead are different from what they call themselves. The dead are wrong about their behavior.

What are the dead afraid of? Are they afraid they'll never write again? Are they afraid they have no talent? Are they afraid of worshiping talent? Are they afraid of worshiping? Do they see time as a false imposition? Are they afraid of being conjured? Are they afraid of remembering things they've done? It's running away from me, from you, running right through us, the hidden abandoned carnival and it's an ordinary day, with jobs to do, people to see or avoid like our own contradictions. What happens when we think we can picture the dead? Words aren't pictures. They have no other side. Don't think you're safe if you're reading this-your hands are on the dead right now. If you think the world is all right as it is, be smart and burn this book. Creation is perfect, Bob Kaufman says.

Dreams are the deaths in which the dead can live. Be smart and burn this book.