The Magicians at Work
By Nicky Beer
After Jim Steinmeyer’s book “Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear”
Over the years they hunted,
the wayward apprentice watchmakers,
the disappointing sons who transformed
their surnames, hunted over acres
of hinges, cogs, calluses, hidden whiskey,
mustaches a breath from feral,
poured an ocean of fortune
into fabrications of brass and iron,
spent entire seasons strumming
massive harps of wire into perfect
calibrations of invisibility,
prayed to the gods of adjustable mirrors,
cursed the gods of temperamental gaslights,
broke the legs of imitators and thieves,
chewed holes in each other’s pockets,
harnessed nightmares of giant silver hoops
making endless passes over the bodies
of the dead, hoisted high a cenotaph
for hundreds of sacrificed rabbits,
breathed miles of delicate thread
into the lost labyrinths of their lungs,
all to make a woman float
to make a woman float
and none of them ever thought
of simply asking her.
Source: Poetry (November 2018)