Houdini
By Robert Hedin
There is a river under this poem.
It flows blue and icy
And carries these lines down the page.
Somewhere beneath its surface
Lying chained to the silt
Harry holds his breath
And slowly files
His fingernails into moons.
He wonders who still waits at the dock
If the breasts of those young girls
Have developed since he sank.
He thinks of his parents
Of listening to the tumblers
Of his mother's womb
Of escaping upward out of puberty
Out of the pupils in his father's eyes
And those hot Wisconsin fields.
He dreams of escaping
From this poem
Of cracking the combinations
To his own body
And those warm young safes
Of every girl on the dock.
Jiggling his chains
Harry scares a carp that circles
And nibbles at his feet.
He feels the blue rush of the current
Sweeping across his body
Stripping his chains of their rust
Until each link softens
And glows like a tiny eel.
And Harry decides to ascend.
He slips with the water
Through his chains
And climbing over and over
His own air bubbles
He waves to the fish
To his chains glittering
And squirming in the silt.
He pauses to pick a bouquet
Of seaweed for the young girls
on the dock. Rising
He bursts the surface of this poem.
He listens for shouts.
He hears only the night
And a buoy sloshing in the blue.
Copyright Credit: Robert Hedin, "Houdini" from The Old Liberators: New and Selected Poems and Translations. Copyright © 1998 by Robert Hedin. Reprinted by permission of Holy Cow! Press.