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VALERIE MACEWAN Beaufort County Fair Caroline at eight still rides kiddie rides and smiles. Big black women with huge butts wave to their children as they sail by. Laughing faces, taken in by the smells and the sounds, and the lights. Forgetting to see the dirt and the tattoos, looking only at stuffed dogs and unicorns, sawdust-filled bears and cotton candy. Fat men in blue work shirts with their name sewn above the pocket grip Marlboro cigarettes in toothless grins, their stomachs shaking with laughter as the kiddie cars pass around again. Almost laughter, not quite sin. Women in new sandals, tight skirts, and ratted yellow hair stand by the livestock pavilion, curse their children, and try to light matches in the wind. Over to the livestock pavilion puppies, bunnies, kitties, name it, they're all free. Theres a woman in a wheelchair And she yells at her costumed dog to stay. The dogs dressed like Mrs. Drysdale. Obedience is hard to photograph in black and white, and the newspaper man wanders back towards the midway. The carnival smells of unwashed socks. And Caroline tells me ?Look, look now...There's two, I saw all both of them. and I stare as the midway hocks up its riders and they spew from pandemonium back into the night.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines REPAIR: Concourse or confluence of people at or in a place; resort, frequent or habitual going; making one's way; to arrive; to dwell; to heal, to cure, to recover; to renew; (AND!) to fix to original condition. In each sense, www.poetryrepairs.com
