Kittie Belltree

            He draws a silk scarf from a secret pocket in his trousers – snakes
            it around wrists, splits in two, twists it taut, like her vocal cords,

            places it over her eggshell eyelids, then offers his hand – white-gloved

            bowing low, he lets loose the stolen jewels lining his jacket.

            She accepts – blindly – curtseying into the citrine shaft

            of spotlight that slices the stage in half, then footsteps
            into the dead-flat chest, arranges herself – doll-like – inside

            before he lays the wooden lid to rest.

            Until now he has kept her for himself, fed on a diet of sliced

            tongue and pearl cufflinks. The ritual begins before the stage

            door, before the audience, the dressing room – where he inserts

            the knife into her velvet and feathers, plucks

            her hair into tucks and tresses, places a glass
            slipper on her pillow. Thus, he enters without breaking
            and she slips seamlessly into the space conjured by his third wife

            who broke all his spells while he snored by the stove

            after Saturday matinée, stole the key to his best hat box

            for her whale-bone combs and peacock frocks
            and vanished with a ventriloquist from Vladivostok.
            He feels the thickness of the blade like honey inside her

            and the strength of his heaving old magic. Why, his wand

            can cut her in two – separate her bones from her meat

            like halving a peach. She is ripe, now, for his next trick –

            Now he has her undone, he will make her disappear. Now –