The Luck Inside a Penny

after Emily Kerlin

My mother takes us to the circus 
in the city, a hard walk to a long bus 
to a short subway.

I rescue a coin from the tile floor, 
daring me so close to the tracks 
that my mother, 

whose sky creeps ever downward 
(till she wears it as a hat) 

has me already done in, fried 
electric, gnawed by rats to the bone, stuck 
there like capital letters.

*

This penny lives inside 
my pocket, delivering a soft
afternoon when storms 

are predicted. It brings me 
a good memory of you, my sweet 
mother, enthralled by an acrobat 

flipped from a trapeze, a man 
on a unicycle juggling knives, 
a lion gumming a human head, 

marking time before the teeth. 

CHRISTY PRAHL

Christy Prahl is the author of the poetry collections We Are Reckless (Cornerstone Press, 2023), With Her Hair on Fire (Roadside Press, 2025), Catalog of Labors (Unsolicited Press, fall 2026), and The Grocery Pageant (Nixes Mate, forthcoming). She splits her time between a small workers’ cottage in Chicago and a refurbished Quonset hut in southwest Michigan.