Presto

the illusionist
comforted us with stagecraft
rabbits and mirrors

clued us to being fooled
a familiar experience
and preferable

to the suggestion
that the world was diverging
from reality

as we conceived it
smoke and disappearances
might disconcert us

but they were just tricks
we could feel that we were safe
in fake disasters

though we slinked away
from the cut-in-half woman
like witnesses

to an accident
who hoped that no one would ask
what really happened

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Chris Bullard lives in Philadelphia, PA. He received his B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and his M.F.A. from Wilkes University. Finishing Line Press published his poetry chapbook, Leviathan, in 2016 and Kattywompus Press published High Pulp, a collection of flash fiction, in 2017. His work has appeared in publications such as 32 Poems, Green Mountains Review, Rattle, Pleiades, River Styx, and Nimrod.