D(i)s(appear)ing Acts

First published in The Tundish Review, Issue Eleven, 2019

after Sylvia Plath’s “The Night Dances”

I see your smile doubled over

in the backyard and wonder

—is it just a bruise I’ve misinterpreted?

I’ve spoiled these sacred steps

to our night dances, mistaken tigers

and lions for stray kittens left in boxes

I breathe down your blouse, imitate a look

—this house, these books are all yours

Your perfume drags itself to the pantry

Our lions and tigers go to war over

distribution rights while the comets end

up boiling over the stovetop, all missing my sleight

of hand. I gesture to you like a magician

practising his disappearing acts into heaven

—for this next trick I’ll need a volunteer

So, I bring your out-of-orbit planets back

into my pull. Run the end of this

poem off the face of the earth 

Art courtesy of Bronte Mark