The Magician's White Handkerchief

conjures an image of eight old men
arms akimbo
filling the field with a wheel
while the Grecian urn of the moon
sends a breath of white fire onto their upturned
faces.
He remembers the candle of their eyes
growing wilder as they danced
their limbs like the dry leaves underfoot
cracking with age
but still they danced, the handkerchief
trailing out behind like a woman's white hand.

In the woods, watching them
he tried to imagine himself an animal
and they the prey;
it made it easier while
he waited for the signal to be given
and when the shots began it was easier
to believe the handkerchief had always been red
like the one the magician's hand
pulls from his sleeve.

  
 

Joy Hewitt Mann has been publishing in print for ten years with work in such literary magazines as The Malahat Review, Whetstone and Amelia. An e-zine enthusiast since January, her work has appeared in The Paumonok Review, Apples & Oranges, Aabye's Baby (UK), King Log, Unlikely Stories, and Poetry Now. She was the 1997 winner of the $5,000 Leacock Award for poetry and this year's winner of the Acorn-Rukeyser Chapbook Award. Her first chapbook "Voices From The Other Side Of The Moon" was published by Bard Press Books, Staten Island, NY, in 1998. When not writing she runs a large junk store.

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