"Deception" by Bart Edelman

Deception

If it were as simple

As pulling a black rabbit

Out of a white hat,

I’d do it in a flash—

Spare the tricks of the trade

One last time prior to exiting.

But that’s surely in the past.

I’ve nothing up my sleeve.

And should you know me, at all,

You wouldn’t bother asking.

I haven’t employed either arm,

Since the debacle last Easter,

When a few fingers got loose,

Costing me my reputation.

Now I’m in the market

For a good, clean, steady job—

No funny business or magic

To sully the name I was given,

Before thievery turned fashionable.

Just promise to place me

On the straight and narrow.

Provide a path I can’t resist.

Step aside and let me work—

Free of craft’s deception.

Bio: Bart Edelman’s poetry collections include Crossing the Hackensack (Prometheus Press), Under Damaris’ Dress (Lightning Publications), The Alphabet of Love (Red Hen Press), The Gentle Man (Red Hen Press), The Last Mojito (Red Hen Press), The Geographer’s Wife (Red Hen Press), Whistling to Trick the Wind (Meadowlark Press), and This Body Is Never at Rest: New and Selected Poems 1993 – 2023 (Meadowlark Press). He has taught at Glendale College, where he edited Eclipse, a literary journal, and, most recently, in the MFA program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. His work has been widely anthologized in textbooks published by City Lights Books, Etruscan Press, Fountainhead Press, Harcourt Brace, Longman, McGraw-Hill, Prentice Hall, Simon & Schuster, Thomson/Heinle, the University of Iowa Press, Wadsworth, and others. He lives in Pasadena, California.