The Great Magician
April 27 2009


The magician’s assistant
wears her insistent smile
unfazed.
In the limbo of disappearance.
Sawed through the middle
watching,
as her wiggling toes are wheeled apart.
And in her model’s pose,
drawing our attention to rabbits.

She wears revealing clothes,
a vision from some magic planet
not at all like us.
While he takes all the credit
in top-hat and snappy tux;
she, the passive object
of his spells.

But one day, he taps his wand to make her vanish,
and she fails to reappear.

Perhaps lost, or banished
to some exotic land,
the enchanted dimension
of odd socks
forgotten words.
Perhaps gone —
sick of smiling.
Or too fat
for skimpy costumes.
Or out-of-the-blue
badly allergic to rabbits.
And the bedraggled master
reduced
to plucking coins from children’s ears,
making babies’ noses
disappear.
To boos, and catcalls.



Or were they lovers, all along
who fought,
stomping-off in a huff to mother’s?
The great magician powerless
to conjure her up
bring her back.
Just apathetic rabbits
from threadbare hats.





Nothing very deep behind this poem. I was in the mood to write, but had absolutely no idea what to write about, no particular inspiration or urgency. So I picked up a recent issue of the New Yorker that was handy, and riffled through the cartoons for an idea. This one caught my eye. Frankly, I think any one of them would have done.

But as it turns out, there is something very affecting in this one: about the illusion of power; about determined self-deception; about continuing to live in the past. And also about the balance of power, as well as the always fraught and perilous nature of relationships -- especially the intimate ones.

By the way, importing this cartoon from the New Yorker web-site was not easy; not to mention that it's probably a flagrant breach of copyright!