Rikki Santer
Abracadabra Abecedarian
Archetype of these times, the theater swathed in inky
black velvet, the gyre of dwelling in the prestidigital age,
cat & mouse of it, gallery of creased brows that lend virtuosity in
deviance with each deal, no end to
enthrall to mesmerism, just feast on the
fusillade of his growling tweets, firehose of a flame that just can’t clear its
goosenecked throat & leaves us
handcuffed like Houdini; how to expose that formula of
invisibility when illusionists try to get as much as possible from a
jackdaw of props; he thinks he is the King
Kong of cards, knowing how the trick is done but not how to do it,
levitating the taproot of daily news;
mirrors ripple in their angles of incidence,
newsfeed seance, stage doors first slightly propped
open, then gummed shut, as he
palms the next head floating; the dove from his top hat
quacking partisan facts wrinkled & rough &
ready to rise from his teetering
sarcophagus, each syllable rumbling MAGA MAGA MAGA, his
trick with a title that’s
utterly realistic but not real & could
vanish like the smoke puff of tenuous success so we
watch like an audience who yearns to believe in a good witch not a
xenophobic witch of the west & we turn the channel, the cheek & struggle to loosen the
yoke of media obsession & pray that when our sight lines finally
zigzag across stage, they’ll settle on an empty cabinet where the elephant has vanished.
Rikki Santer is the author In Pearl Broth (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019) as well as six previous poetry collections. Her work has appeared in Ms. Magazine, Poetry East, Margie, Hotel Amerika, The American Journal of Poetry, Slab, Crab Orchard Review, RHINO, Grimm, Slipstream, Midwest Review and The Main Street Rag, among other publications. Santer lives in Columbus, Ohio. Learn more online at rikkisanter.com.
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