‘Nantasket Half-Elegy’ by Jen Jabaily-Blackburn

Photo credit: Rob McCready (Flickr)

One of the last holdouts, the Fascination parlor, once a palace of warm blinking lights and menthol smoke, is only half awake, any nightly turn of its key perhaps the last. Playland Arcade was gone too soon; its sister, the Dream Machine, still lives. Kooky Kastle, Bermuda Triangle, Tunnel of Love; all gone, gone, gone. Kohr Bros. pulled its last custard a decade ago, the decadent wrought-iron swirls enrobed in cherry and chocolate. Is there a plainer word for promenade? For the surface custards split on under ongoing fugues of jut-lipped tears? The bathhouse’s repolished glass bricks fling caustics. Someone’s been refreshing the stucco ornaments; as long as there’s a sea, there’s salt that needs to be rinsed clean. The Giant Coaster, twice burned, twice reborn, was dismantled and packed to a Six Flags far too far from the shore; a hideous condominium phoenixed up in its place. Paragon Carousel’s delicate Wurlitzer trembles through Mister Sandman, and may it never – I mean let me live long. As long as there’s a sea. And let it outlive me.

From issue #9: autumn/winter 2019

About the Author
Jen Jabaily-Blackburn lives with her family in Western Massachusetts, where she works for the Poetry Center at Smith College. Twice named to Best New Poets (2014 and 2016), her work has appeared in The Common, Massachusetts Review, and Rattle.