MAGICIAN’S FORCE by Darcy Shargo

                                                               I’ll teach you how to set your heart off
                                                               like a skiff in rough water. How to exist
                                                               in the shadows of a top hat, mere
                                                               audience to your own life. See here the sleight
                                                               of hand involved in the shuffling—

                                                               this deck of cards strung to tales of misfortune
                                                               that I keep taped to my inside pocket. 
                                                               I live as feather, paper bouquet, things 
                                                               that are dissolvable in water. I am only
                                                               as alive as my deception allows me to be. 

                                                               It’s hard to recall how it all got started, 
                                                               how I ended up here on stage, the quivering saw
                                                               cutting through a lovely stranger, 
                                                               her eyes themselves tricks of light, her skin
                                                               and mine together a moving trompe l’oeil.

Darcy Shargo lives and works in central Maine, where she and her husband dream of leaving the grind behind to start a small farm. In the meantime, she fights massive amounts of mother guilt, writes poems, gardens, and tries to become the person she’s meant to be. Her poetry has appeared in Smartish Pace, The New Orleans Review, Salt Hill and Crazyhorse.

Asked if she could make anything visible, she said, “I’d like to see a visual representation of the soul manifest on everyone’s chest—and I’d pay special attention to the souls of children, which I feel confident are the most vibrant of all.”

Back to Issue 3: Things Unseen