Mustard Honey

Houdini reincarnated, rubs his back legs together, his sting muted.
The stilted waft of bitter lime, held in with cloth diaphragm,
stretched taut over a tin lid, with him, tapping out his exit.

Thinking it's just another dressing room, with a brittle twist
of rubber bands. Not a pickle-jar, empty of half-sour Satkora,
filled with three leaves from a fattening mango tree, red Dopati.

Pierced holes in the top with a compass, Ehrie below breathing
the tightrope edge, nomadic, scattering pollen over the New World,
like a mislaid blessing, looking: for a launch pad, navigation grass,

the sweet nectar of apricot flowers. Looking: to fracture
an elbow, glass. Make this dammed air slosh out like water from
a cracked snow globe, his milk can, his Chinese cell, his home.