Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
We’re thrilled to introduce you to a brand-new chapter in The Alembic’s history. For the first time ever, we’re offering an audio edition of the journal—an exciting new endeavor for 2025. In this edition, you’ll hear every written piece read aloud by Providence College students, bringing a new dimension and life to the written word.
Born in a creaking grey hospital bed
overlooking a boisterous carnival,
these contrasts I wear all my life: pale doctor
and laughing clown, snap of umbilical cord
and Ferris wheel spinning a contrail through
the crisp, new Brisbane August winter.
I was gossamer fairy-floss spun on sticks,
pink as the fragile edge of twilight,
yet bright as candied apples.
The barkers cut the howling of infants with
their lush come-on, enticed the crowds into
the sparkling nursery to see the geeks of birth.
And the mob that peered through the window glass
at my raw flesh were a fairground throng,
sisters, aunts, uncles, demanding to be entertained
by a chorus line of miniature life and cuteness.
Those nights I sat inside my mother’s bent frame,
I knew noise and explosion of color,
as the sky filled with fireworks,
and I yearned to cry yet soothed on
the sound of soft-spoken words
as I melted into her gentle petals of touch.
And when the taxi came to whisk us
that much further away from the beginning,
the tents were already folding inwards,
rides dismantled, caravans pulling
out of the muddy flats, fortune tellers
flashing me one more smile, each twinkle
of an eye whispering I’d be theirs someday—
just wait.