Something Old

I've been digging through some older pieces and came across this one from last spring.  It's based on the picture at the left, a print by Susan Meiselas from her book  "Carnival Strippers".  Who knew women did that in the seventies--stripped at carnivals?  I don't remember that little attraction at any carnival I ever attended, though--to be fair--my memories of carnivals start somewhere in the 80s.  


Anyway, the structure (sections) feel a little forced.  I don't know if there's another way to do it, but I thought I'd ask you fine people for suggestions.  Help appreciated.

Land Speed 


1
Carnivals in Guthrie are popular with the kids, their
fingers still sticky in the white of winter as they picture
pink puffs of cotton candy they gnashed between
uninsured teeth through June and July. Their parents--
Guthrie locals who never made it out--spend summers
wandering the grounds and squinting up at lights that,
when they were kids, glittered like promises. 


2
It’s been four years since the Munich Olympics, four
years since Jenny watched, breathless, as the American
from Oregon with the scraggly hair and bushy mustache 
pressed into the wind, his body moving like the gears in
her grandfather’s watch, arms and legs marking time
around the great track that would, eventually, beat him. 
Four years since she’d graduated, four years of remembering

the track stars in high school with quick feet and quicker
mouths, their ropey arms that pinned a girl against cracked
back seat vinyl til she was dreamily defenseless.  Those boys--
who knew about stamina, who held their breath and kept their eyes
open when they kissed so they could see the finish line instead
of groping around for it in the dark--those boys were long gone.
They’d run out almost before the graduation caps hit the ground.   


3
Billy Howard came to Guthrie a week ahead, scraggly hair, bushy
mustache, a smile with as much grease in it as there were teeth. 
The advance man, he’d come to pay off cops, secure licenses,
chat up local girls who had nothing but Guthrie beauty school or
disappointing marriages to look forward to, their best days behind
them.  He needed girls for the strong show and knew moony eyes
and broken hearts were best for that kind of work. 


4

Jenny’s been flying for a week or so. Summer is long and from up
here Billy could be the American runner who died last year. Drowsy 
from the drugs someone always has on hand, she squints at the lights, 
those false stars, tells herself it's not so bad. Every night she dreams
of running.  Shaking like a windblown leaf on her box, sleepily spinning
in opposite directions as she tries to break the land speed record, her legs--
wheels beneath her--spreading wider, circling faster as the crowd roars on.