The Frightened Magician’s Final Performance
by J. J. Steinfeld
There at the front of the stage
a frightened magician begins to perform
one more anxious trick
Halloween night has been long and disappointing
the tricks and trickery
getting more convoluted
than an inveterate swindler
reminiscing over a lifetime
of seeking the beauty of deception.
I will make a ghost appear
and offer solace and consolation
I will make a ghost take earthly form
and offer a million sweet proofs,
the frightened magician says,
sweat on his straining brow
knowing the weight of last chances—
in the midst of the most sonorous
abracadabra words I’d ever heard
he drops dead and hits the floor
like a discarded prop
or a perfect clattering curse.
Everyone in the audience
goes home with a new memory
and something to talk about
for at least a day or two.
A Cemetery’s Birds and Ghosts
by J. J. Steinfeld
in a cemetery as unyielding
as mythology and madness
hasty in its grasp for meaning
and explanation and joy however misshapen
you experience a concoction of time
and language and garbled truths
what shameful nourishment taunts
you hear a song you cannot comprehend
birds and ghosts all about
some louder than others
you see a phase of the moon as indecipherable
as the moment of birth and the instant of death
you hug, in desperation or random coercion,
a vision and feel its defiance
birds the girth of ghosts
and ghosts the airiness of birds
you take a brooding morsel
that was once something else
you smell a fire from another time
and say to the birds and ghosts
words about another era
that era less long than current minutes
it is by minutes that punishment is exacted
you attempt to retrace your steps
the cemetery laughing beneath resentment
the birds with the voice of ghosts
the ghosts with the naturalness of birds
it will all be different and bearable
when the visitors arrive
one by one or in a frightened group
unlike unafraid birds and enduring ghosts
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