Girls were strung from trees in dresses not their own. All were cast in the androgyny of late adolescence—their hair un-pinned. Caretakers and the like hung keepsakes alongside the girls. In this way, the trees became burdened with gowns and the weight of self-portraiture. Later, bathed in artificial light, the girls would gather up their spent dresses, or remove them all the same, to let headdress-ed boys gnash teeth against green bottles and bone.

The scene was not without departure. There were lines to stand and mules to ride. The assembled coasters had turned the grounds into a factory canopy of Tatlin frames and siege machines on which to play. Some stood a story high.

The crowds thickened with evening. Fair-goers pulsed beneath midway lights. Pinks and Violets. Machinists took tickets in naked torsos and held turpentine-ed rags to their throats. Their girlfriends leaned against railings in blemished dresses and corduroy. They hid vials of alcohol beneath their clothes and laughed, at times, in a bra-less demeanor.

The girls still in trees tightly spun. Boys turned silently beneath them. Other girls, long since cut down, made themselves up in lip-pencils and mascara. They slept on blankets with carnival citations pinned to their sleeves. Or else took the weight of practiced admirers. I crowded their revelry. I disrupted their sex acts.

I wanted my nose broken in just such a way.