200 Section 20

Magic Act

Kseniya and Zhenya do Las Vegas

 [I don’t know where or how to begin explaining the origin of this latest unusually personal section of 200, which could also serve as a standalone poem. I could argue that I have long yearned to write a poem that combines magic and surgery, Christology and pagan sacrifice, but that would be a lie. The idea only came to me recently as I labored in hospital under the physical and psychological complications arising from the amputation of my only surviving leg and yet was somehow born afresh from the experience. This poem is silly, dark, and cynical, like all my work, but there are nevertheless glimmers of hope and light within it, sutured into the seams.]

1 Presentation

Kay and Zee skip on stage

in the amphitheater, kitted

out in skimpy lingerie and surgical masks.

Zhenya clumsily cradles a stray

kitten she has picked up

in the back alley around the trash cans

and decked with pink ribbons.

*

“And for the next trick I am doing,”

Kseniya announces, “my delectable,

desirable, doped up assistant

will use a magic analytic algorithm

I have devised.” Zee tugs a piece

of yellowed scrap paper etched

with blue-inked ciphers

fastened by a blood red garter

to the black fishnet fabric

that wraps her stately legs.

“…to randomly select,” K continues,

portentously,

“one lucky young gentleman

from our esteemed audience,

to aid us in our dark illusory

endeavor this fine day.”

Zee dumps the kitten

into the opened coffin splayed

out on the operating table,

as the audience oohs and aahs

and Zhenya of the mystical eyes

leads one unsuspecting member out onto

the box undone, opened out

like a cruciform flower

and straps his young limbs in

to the contraption;

as orderlies, like creatures

from the visions of Ezekiel,

wheel in instruments around him.

*

Kseniya raises her bone-saw

and sets about her grinding

tortuous work, long

before the mercy of anesthesia

finally kicks in. And Zhenya

performs a little ad hoc

circumcision with shaky hand,

as loose kitten hops off

happily to pick off odd bits

of freshly excised human flesh.

And Kseniya lifts up

the sawn blood-dripping half

of victim in triumph

for all to see.

2 Obscene

The joke lies in the point

where audience members realize

the illusion is real. Some march

out in disgust. Some throw

up over themselves in their seats.

Others cry blue murder but wait

to see the real magic

as Kseniya sews Humpty Dumpty

back together again and ghosts

in the gods

applaud random man reborn.

3 Aftermath

Infinity is not where you get to

when you count back down from ten,

but a deeper nothing, coming not at the end,

nor at the beginning, but in the midst

of things—a nothing filled

with half-dreams, knives,

scalpels, ether, tubes,

kittens, scattered limbs,

syringes, wires,

needles; your eyes your smile,

in the morning after

before dawn, blonde vampire

nurses drawing your mind

through a dream

with subtle lethal bloodsuckers.