THE ANNUAL MAGIC SHOW

It is one remarkable thing to find
your actual ring in a carved up peach.
The magician’s assistant wears a smile,
wide as a Halloween pumpkin grin,
as she shoots the maestro to a drum roll
and he catches a bullet in his teeth.
Me and Tex weren’t tom-fooled by that one bit.
What we came to see was his predicament
in a tin box of water but were real disappointed
when he just climbed out to the triumphant clash of cymbals
—should have had me to inspect those chains.
Let’s see how she gets on in a cabinet pierced
with the swords of matrimonial disharmony—we
know they don’t get on—heard them arguing before the act
—something about spending on extra birds.
We could sell ’em chooks but it’s always doves flap out that hat.
And where do they perch above and do they poop, Tex wonders.
To be fair we always gets our phones and watches back,
healed and intact after being hammered,
in that crude, deceptive ritual of dismemberment.
And it always ends with levitation,
when he chooses a volunteer—never me nor Tex though,
more like that skinny Hannah in the second row
to pick up and float with, her screeching all the while,
him hoping the wires don’t bust,
copping a feel as they sway,
the wife casting a blue, baleful eye
and it’s true he does look like a vulture up there,
taking his prey to where the trick doves must be…
amazing those deluded hicks below
at the annual magic show.

Clive Donovan has three poetry collections, The Taste of Glass (Cinnamon Press, 2021), Wound Up With Love (Lapwing, 2022) and Movement of People (Dempsey & Windle, 2024), and is published in a wide variety of magazines including Acumen, Agenda, Crannóg, Popshot, Prole, and Stand. He lives in Totnes, Devon. Clive was a Pushcart and Forward Prize nominee for 2022’s best individual poems.