Toby- A Prose Poem: Next Poem by Morgan Michaels

The mess tent was quiet the next day. The circus was like a country, its king kidnapped and held for ransom. People huddled in small groups, talking. Most were fonder of his horse than of Ajax personally, to be sure. Why? His scorn. His confidence. His end-point-of-history-good looks. His cynicism. The body he inhabited so easily, its early maturity, disastrous, intriguing. His perfectly-cast poise, his carriage- everything people systematically agree to envy. But now they spoke well of him, because that's what the circus was about- all those things- it being a place of show. Maybe that's what life itself was about- it, too, being an occasion for show. Folks shook their heads, said his day was coming. But, hardship is the mother of sympathy. Folks who bad-mouthed Ajax now denied the slanders they so readily spread.