Almost a Conjuror

By Lucie Brock-Broido b. 1956 Lucie Brock-Broido

The slight white poet would assume non-human forms, homely

Grampus fish, a wahoo, nuthatch, nit.

He had no romance except

Remorse, which he used like fuzzy algebra. By pouring bluing

On black porous coal, he crystallized, pronounced himself almost

A sorcerer. He had an empty cloakroom

In the chest of him.

All the lost wool scarves

Of all the world collected there & muffled him

With wool.

He imagined he could move a broom if he desired, just by wishing

It. If he spoke of ghosts, he thought he could make of art vast

Tattersall & spreading wings.

When they found him in the nurse’s office,

He was awkward as a charlatan, slightly queasy

In an emperor’s real clothes.

The thermos in his lunchbox was perpetually

Broken and he lied. The small world smelled of oil

Of peppermint, for a broken spell. Everything is plaid

And sour in oblivion, as well.

Source: Trouble in Mind (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004)

Biography

Lucie Brock-Broido was born in Pittsburgh, was educated at Johns Hopkins and Columbia universities, and has taught at Bennington, Princeton, Harvard (where she was a Briggs-Copeland poet), and Columbia. She is the recipient of fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation, as well as awards from the American Poetry Review and the Academy of American Arts and Letters.

In an interview with Carol Maso for BOMB magazine in . . .

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