The Magician

The magician arrived one night
without notice from a place outside of time—
his appearance unobserved, instantaneous.
His green tower on wheels resembled a child’s playhouse
and carried the aura of a monument.
The racket of pigeons in its cupola
flew through the townspeople’s dreams
to startle them into the streets.

The magician commanded
the stone-silent buildings of the square,
their arches agape as mouths.
Trees peeked uneasily over the town wall.
Even the sky shed its indifference,
compelled to hold its breath.

He popped down the back door
to make a miniature stage. Inside,
his world was infinite.
A lion lay behind him like a fire;
in the window, a goat, his loyal accomplice.
The owls on watch were the ones
to fear. Unseen, an automaton
rested deathless against a wall.

The magician spun golden planets
around the bright star of his head, his hands
as deft as thieves. From his orange cape
he drew glass vials of strange potions
and set them, as in a ritual,
on a tiny, exquisite table. He summoned
a cloud to dust dried botanicals
over his stunned audience.
The air grew sweet and thick.

For hours upon hours—no one could say
how long—the crowd stood watching,
eyes wide as saucers, unblinking.
Their witness lodged within them
as a ceaseless, inscrutable hunger.
The magician himself was infinite.

Abruptly, without ceremony, the magician
popped up his stage and shut the door.
He and his entourage disappeared,
as though they had never existed.

Dawn rose over the town.
Gloved and gray bundled against
the cold, the townspeople dared not
leave the square. Sleepy, apostolic, they
waited where they stood for all their lives.
Not one could put reason to what
they had seen, to the spell that
rattled them forever to their core.

--after Remedios Varo’s painting The Juggler (The Magician)

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Susan Cronin earned an MFA in poetry from the New School and attended the 2023 Juniper Summer Writing Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her poems are forthcoming in Pine Hills Review and Tinderbox Poetry Journal and have appeared in journals such as Blood Tree Literature, LIGEIA, Southwest Review (2022 Elizabeth Matchett Stover Award), A-Minor, Nashville Review, and DMQ Review.