by Sara Backer
The Man Who Is Never Wrong
He shreds paper into a top hat,
waves his wand, and pulls out a white rabbit
assured of his talent in misdirection. He, too,
watches his hand with the wand, ignoring
his hand in the hat. A magician is never wrong.
He adroitly shifts the world from round to flat,
several lies ahead of fact-checkers,
truth-seekers, and women who fall in love
with him by proxy for the idea that change is easy.
The man who is never wrong has no qualms
about altering past or predicting future.
He lives for an audience that is never right,
that confirms his power by believing the wand,
believing rabbits materialize from hats
and vanish after the show instead of trundling
into cages to eat pellets from a plastic dish.
Someday, I’ll sneak backstage and steal the rabbit.
We’ll find a field of alfalfa and live by principles
of matter and uncertainty, on a watery globe
that circles a fiery sun.
Published in Gargoyle