Learn these tricks for an amusement, but do not carry them into your everyday life.
– J. Theobald, The Amateur Magician
I studied how to cut the Princess of Thebes into nine pieces
and pluck the Lady of Karnac to hover at my fingertips
over a pit of flames. They’d have danced back every time,
those flexuous girls, to catch the paper bouquets
I’d whisk from my gloves.
And then, Swallowing the Needle, the Knife through the Heart –
the trick is to leave no visible traces. Palm up palm down
here’s a coin in your ear, here’s your purse in my hand
before you knew it had gone. Your ear-ring?
Watch me cut open this apple.
What followed came easy: the Riffle Shuffle, the Faro Shuffle,
the snap and fan of Lost Queens descending a staircase again, again,
all the false cuts, false dealing, the Criss Cross, the Switch.
I mastered the Ambitious Card; fumbled the Finger Break.
It would always be Double or Nothing.
And look, there’s nothing between my hands, nothing up my sleeves –
only a length of silk ribbon I’ll walk through, without a cut or a knot.
It’s Expansion of Texture, that trick that makes nothing appear.
It’s my gift.
I’ve left you my Vanishing Card.