Tourist Traps
It's Upstate New York in the 1950s,
land of amusements,
natural wonders like Ausable Chasm
and High Falls Gorge,
and tourist traps, kiddie parks
like Land of Makebelieve,
a castle with a dungeon, and train cars
just wide enough for one kid.
You can still see pink turrets through the trees,
and under the eaves the paper lanterns of wasps.
At 1,000 Animals you could drive a cart
pulled by an ostrich, or pose for a Polaroid
with a boa at the Serpentarium,
then feed him a mouse. Or watch
boys in a pit milk snakes for venom.
Nothing's left but Santa's Workshop,
June through August. Frontier Town's gone.
The antique stagecoach
jounced on a flatbed out of town.
When I can't sleep or am trying to stay
awake in the car, I slip back
into the traffic of children roaming
the child-sized streets, floating
past their parents on the carousel.
I hand-feed the deer.
I walk in and out of the fake jail,
and climb the castle's stucco tower.
I don't stay too long.
I don't want to end up
trapped in a place where
childhood never ends.
Copyright Credit: Chase Twichell, "Tourist Traps" from Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 2010 by Chase Twichell. Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press.