He walks up to the podium
smiling at the introduction he wrote
delivered by someone who likely
had never read his work, and set his book
and notes down on the lectern.
As he begins to read he cannot let on
that he is a magician poet for they
would demand a trick and all
that he is prepared to do this night
is to pull the occasional metaphorical
rabbit from a poem, make its rhyme
suddenly disappear, or pluck
an endless stream of words
from a seemingly blank page.
He has no assistant to distract
the audience that wonders why
it chose to attend the reading
so he plunges forward hoping
that at least he can please them
with several feats of sleight of tongue.