A compressed sandwich of clowns as bright as an arcade game emerge from my neighbor’s rusted clunker. My God, they look beautiful and dangerous, never-ending strings of black handkerchiefs wrapped around their necks like nooses, a bold light emitted from their rainbow-colored eyes. I try to think of plain things: milk jugs, town halls, paper boys, aluminum gliders, but they’ve become strange. A plane that looks like a plane flies overhead. I wish I were riding it.

Jeannie Vanasco lives in Brooklyn, New York. Her writing has appeared in the Believer, Coffin Factory, Tin House, and elsewhere.