Mustard Honey


from the ABC set Atlas

Houdini reincarnated, rubs his back legs together, his sting muted.
The stilted waft of bitter lime, held in with cloth diaphragm,
stretched taut over a tin lid, with him, tapping out his exit.

Thinking it's just another dressing room, with a brittle twist
of rubber bands. Not a pickle-jar, empty of half-sour Satkora,
filled with three leaves from a fattening mango tree, red Dopati.

Pierced holes in the top with a compass, Ehrie below breathing
the tightrope edge, nomadic, scattering pollen over the New World,
like a mislaid blessing, looking: for a launch pad, navigation grass,

the sweet nectar of apricot flowers. Looking: to fracture
an elbow, glass. Make this dammed air slosh out like water from
a cracked snow globe, his milk can, his Chinese cell, his home.

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