The Magicians at Work

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.