Sign-In
Cart
Fire at the Big Top
Paperback
General PoetryRegional: New England
Publisher Price: $16.99
ISBN13: 9781970256123
Publisher: Moonpath Press
Published: Jun 1 2026
Pages: 60
Weight: 0.21
Height: 0.14 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
The 80th anniversary of the circus fire looms / like burnt smoke over water. Now you are // both the boy and the girl and the only one / left to tell this story. So begins this collection of flaming poems that illuminates sexual love and lights up the circus. Yannone gives each performer a sonnet in a corona that includes the wire walker, the clown, the human cannonball, the bandleader. Before you've finished reading this page-turner, which is both a jeremiad and a joy, you'll even hear from the arsonist, himself, who intones, There is nothing on Earth I wouldn't want / To watch burn.
-Lillo Way, Flying: Trapeze Poems
An erotic circus of the glittering, gaudy, and heartbreaking, Fire at the Big Top is nothing short of electrifying. Yannone has crafted a subversive world of queer performance
and expression, where poems are crowns, matches, acrobats, clowns, knives, and rings and their leaping movements unfurl like colorful scarves or flaming swords. The most
intricate magic trick, this collection shows us how sex and love can turn the mundane into illusion and spectacle.
-Ansley Clark, Bloodline
Fire at the Big Top is a waxed-paraffin blaze of a read! A story of darling dare, wire walking, and combustion. A frenzy of love, destruction and tragedy in circus proportions.
-Catherine Ronan, Elemental Skin
Also from
Yannone, Sandra
Also in
General Poetry
Dante's Vita Nuova, New Edition: A Translation and an Essay
Pitavy, Francois
Alighieri, Dante
Paperback
Sounding the Seasons Enlarged Edition: One Hundred and Ten Sonnets for the Christian Year
Guite, Malcolm
Paperback
Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way
Lao Tzu
Le Guin, Ursula K.
Paperback
They Bloom Because of You: Poems on the Infinite Love, Growth, and Magic of Motherhood
Urlichs, Jessica
Paperback
Ariel: The Restored Edition: A Facsimile of Plath's Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and Arrangement
Plath, Sylvia
Paperback
This Is the Main Event: Discovering the Life You Long for in the Life You Have
Smith, Joshua Luke
Hardcover