Lytton Smith's The All-Purpose Magical Tent, second selection

The Tightrope Walker's Childhood

Fear of wheatfields. Fear of groundbeetles.

Fear of where the tree trunk disapppears

below ground. Fear of ground opening

to absence like the magician's trick cabinet.

She can sleep only on water and fitfully.

Footfall is an act of brevity then she is

soundlessly at your shoulder. From stilts,

rooftops, belltowers she studies faraway,

learns to think as a wing-walker, to harness

bird's-eye view: rivers are blue scarves,

an oxbow lake fits in the small of her back,

fields are a patchwork she can fold

about her at night. Here, afloat above

a sawdust ring, the audience's faces

safe as farms distance has made small, rope

is all the faith she needs. This is no feat

of balance. This is belief and aversion,

this is how earth becomes afterthought.

Lytton Smith

The All-Purpose Magical Tent (Nightboat Books, 2009)

You can buy The All-Purpose Magical Tent with free worldwide shipping from The Book Depository.

Lytton Smith's The All-Purpose Magical Tent, first selection

"Structural for the Tent"

Mainstay. Ringside. Acts. The audience is meant

To believe in the tent even when they pass on

And it’s dismantled—apparition. “The night sky

Was in there. The full moon. The clowns wore

The gravediggers’ smiles.” Circular and itself

In a field. The events transpiring within an illusion

The performers and watchers aspire to maintain.

“The lions I think Africa. The trapeze intercontinental.

We were magicked away.” But there’s nothing magical

About the magical. The audience invents a moment

The disappeared reappear. Any moment now. Now.

Now. I’ve watched the sleight-of-hand from the gods

And found it wanting—each act I can’t take back.

Lytton Smith

The All-Purpose Magical Tent (Nightboat Books, 2009) is available from The Book Depository with free shipping internationally. NB the double-spacing of the poem is accurate.

Boston Review's choice microreviews

Two poets I'm fond of are warmly reviewed in the current Boston Review, one of my favourite magazines: Lytton Smith, for his first collection, The All-Purpose Magical Tent (Nightboat Books), and Sophie Robinson, for her first collection, a (Les Figues), both published last year. Congratulations to both!