Sideshow Skin

By Chloe Crawford La Vada

The velvet curtains part as two  

hands abandoning prayer, and I  

stand on the stage, baptized 

in cold cathode glow, wearing  

spectacle like a shawl 

around my shoulders. 

I know you by now —  

each night, you crowd in with the others,  

amid shadows and sawdust, to see me  

sell the strangeness  

of my sideshow 

skin: 

pearlescent powder covering the blue bruise  

of evening stubble; one side of my body curved  

as if cast by a funhouse mirror, the other  

straight as the stakes that hold my tent in place. 

You search for the seam that separates 

me, the border where he becomes  

she, and find only the faultline  

where disgust becomes  

desire, where revulsion softens  

into reverence. 

A ticket is your tribute  

to our altar of the bizarre: you will come,  

night after night, to fantasize  

among the footlights, to finger  

the seam and see if it splits. 

Once the fairy lights have faded and the calliope  

has coughed its last rusty ragtime note,  

in the aftermath of your applause, silence  

spreads like a lampblack stain.  

I am the midway’s martyr; I die  

a thousand deaths every night, reborn  

each time the curtains rise, as I strip  

off my shawls to reveal  

the curio cabinet  

between my thighs. 

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Chloe Crawford La Vada is a Brooklyn-based writer, artist, and educator whose work primarily focuses on the dark side of the human psyche and experience. Her writing has appeared in a variety of publications, including Macabre Zine, Phantasmal Gallery, MONSTERS iNK, Persephone Literary, and Uncharted Magazine She is currently finishing work on her debut poetry chapbook, a rural Gothic exploration of trans womanhood in America.

Follow her on Instagram: @chloetrycorner 

Image details: The photo is part of the author's private collection. The performer's name was Josephine-Joseph, made famous by the 1932 film 'Freaks'. It is from a brochure distributed in the 1920s at their sideshow performances.