a poem by travis holloway

Indigo Circus

   for Francesco Clemente



On opening night

the curtains part

the tigers and the lions parade in

But when the music turns

into a slow dirge

and the animals arrive in blue

we somehow know

that this is not a circus

There was never any circus

This is a funeral procession


We look on death

because we think we know it

We've studied all its secrets

But one day

it will be

beneath our feet

where the cold rises

from the peat

of an oddly familiar plain

and a grave wakes up

at the sound of our footsteps

and suddenly needs to breathe





Travis Holloway is the translator of two books of French philosophy and the co-author of Occupying Wall Street: The Inside Story of an Action that Changed America. His writing has appeared in The Nation, Guernica, Yasakmeyve, and elsewhere.