Poem

Harry Houdini

Everyone defends you, Harry—
no one says you were tired or old,
washed up or undone. They say, only
that you weren’t quite ready
when the stranger’s balled up
fist sunk fiery into your stomach,
the unseen purple of the bruise
sailing through body fat, organs,
and tissue. Not ready,
not just yet, but the stranger went
before you said go—
how shameful, like drowning in
a bathtub, a bucket, a teaspoon
of water, unshackled, unroped,
forgotten and useless,
altogether private.

--Molly Sutton Kiefer