Wall of Death

"...You can take your time on the other rides,
this is the nearest to being alive.
Oh, let me take my chances on the Wall of Death!"
Richard Thompson

I write this letter to a member of the Wall of Death
on the day I must have really taken
your acrobatic ride. You were that close.
So I drifted it down. my sacrifice,
a half-folded bill with the hope that you
might notice how I shook when you performed.
As I recall I was eye to hair as we rode
together, but confess I needed more
speed, prayed hard that that bike wouldn't fail us.


I am not too cold for your tough antics.
I live here. Sense it out for me, I mean
ride it as if breaths are only made in
an August afternoon on a spry old
Indian while chancing a context for
what's going on here. What is going on
here? It's me. hello, sliding with your wheels,
taking in my first taste of the top edge

boundary of endless air. Now it's your
fair hair that stings my dizzy dry eyes, your
air-cooled sweat backlashing, hits me, and I
hold on, oh Mama, for dear life and hope
we checked the tire pressure right before
we left this earth and I became speedy,
horizontaled with you on this track. So.
I guess my head has learned to close to your


dizzying spin. We won't crash, hear? Oh no,
not ever. So don't spook me by cutting
the gas--plus. you need help with the dollars
from that over pumped audience
who long to see us hurt or die. Easy
money floating down on us, stars
now on the crummy plywood. on the slick
blackened stage where fume streaked summer sun seers


through holes in the sideboards where we landed
hard twice during this hot, dry and mostly
over-greened mountain summer. It is just
another lush, mobile, old fair circuit
theater. But I am ready for your tales
about the next, warm venue, tomorrow,
the next set-up when you ease southerly.
Come on. We both know the engine might stall


if it gets this close to frost and small sparks
of crystal cold make me change my mind. So,
promise you'll send a warm, no, hot, tempting

postcard if I decline your show, and I
swear by the light of your clear, bare, yellow,
incandescent bulbs, if I am never
on that same plane with you again, never
on that scary ascend, I'll keep a watch.


Linda Hogan