I don’t remember begging my father
for a leather whip, but he bought my brother
and me leather whips in upstate New York
the summer we went to a tent show run by
a man who more than likely cracked a whip.
I don’t remember: gee, I want one like his,
or an assistant, or whip tricks
like an assistant holds in her hand a paper
dove a lash shatters, or the man fires
blanks from a pistol at a grinning paper bear
target, but he wore fringed buckskin
and in the tent starred in a Wild West show.
He’d starred in a TV western until cancer
of the larynx forced him off TV. Here he was,
a tent master in the summer night. He rode
a horse around a ring, an audience clapped.
I mostly remember the show ended, he
told his small daughter if she couldn’t keep
her dog quiet he’d take it out and shoot it.
Somehow I knew she was his daughter,
a pup in her arms as he spoke sharply.
I knew also he starred in a TV commercial:
he swam to a dock in a lake, as he sat
on the dock a young woman draped a towel
on his shoulders, and gave him a bottle of
Coke, before his voice changed so it was
no good for TV. I don’t remember the show
he’d starred in, only his tent show, everyone
getting up to leave, him towards the back
scolding her so it wouldn’t happen again.