Central Florida Fair

Trapped in traffic on the Orange Blossom Trail
like a bee locked in amber, stuck-amok.
On my right an electronic billboard flashes:
Come to the Fair. My mind begins to wander. It's 1958.

Saturday night rock-a-billy show: a new kid, Elvis,
bumping and grinning, singing Don't Be Cruel,
You Ain't Nothing but a Hound Dog. Joanie's hot to trot.
We've got Elvis tickets but not $5 for Fair admission. 

We use our Spring-Fall tickets: spring over the fence - 
fall on the other side. Kill-timing before the show: 
Scrambler, Octopussy, Round-up, Tilt-a-whirl. 
I win a teddy bear shooting baskets. I strut, Joanie carries.

Ferris wheel: me, Joanie, and the damned bear, 
making out in centrifugal time.
Coming down we decide to make for the concert, 
scooter-pooting past the side shows; ahead of us

the purple and yellow tent of Little Egypt.
I want to keep hobnailing but I feel a tug on my hand.
Let's go she says, slowing to a draggle-pace,
joining the line of mostly young-people, past the

you must be eighteen to enter sign. Inside, above us a stage. 
A buxom woman climbs, removes her cape. The music 
up-starts seducingly as she strips slowly down to a g-string
and paste-em-ons, opens this box on the stage, wrangles 

a 12-foot albino python, caresses it, and begins to dance.
Directly that snake goes cattywampus, coils her tattooed
neck. Little Egypt panics, can't get any air until two men
hurdle onto the stage and begin unwrapping that pretzel,

holding it out straight like a giant firehose. She bows.
We applaud, reckoning she is safe. We hit the exits 
wondering how much of that is in the act. I snap to 
as the line of cars starts to move, sixty years coming back -

and here I am, first time in Orlando since 1965,
the old fairgrounds demolished,
moved somewhere to the west of town; 
only the theater remains. Elvis is not in the building.


(First published in Saw Palm - 2025)