Poetry by Michael Chin
What Color Is Magic?
It starts with the cauldron. Black exterior. Somehow blacker inside. The kind of darkness you can’t imagine producing light until it does.
The kind you can’t imagine after the dark.
You’re not supposed to share your spells, these family secrets these experiments that often as not come to nothing. But maybe this will be the potion that roils and roils and rumbles and rumbles.
Crack an egg and drain yellow-orange ropes like mucus.
Stir gently. Find the rhythm.
Add a piece of him. Something clean, something white enough to border on translucent.
Rhythm. Don’t lose the rhythm.
Feel it grow this time. Something prophesized. Something that radiates magic. All that ever was. All that ever might be cast in blood and in soft pink.
It starts with the cauldron. Black exterior. Somehow blacker inside. The kind of darkness you can’t imagine producing light until it does.
The kind you can’t imagine after the dark.
You’re not supposed to share your spells, these family secrets these experiments that often as not come to nothing. But maybe this will be the potion that roils and roils and rumbles and rumbles.
Crack an egg and drain yellow-orange ropes like mucus.
Stir gently. Find the rhythm.
Add a piece of him. Something clean, something white enough to border on translucent.
Rhythm. Don’t lose the rhythm.
Feel it grow this time. Something prophesized. Something that radiates magic. All that ever was. All that ever might be cast in blood and in soft pink.
We Never Think to Miss
We never think to miss the things we don’t remember.
Today she watched me stirring chicken and noodles, a question in her eyes. Could I be you someday?
I was a woman over a steaming cauldron.
The broomstick leaned against the corner from yesterday’s catastrophe of shards embedded in grains of sugar on the floor, such a sparkling mess. Will we use the broom again?
Where might that broom take us?
To look at such things and dream of magic. A broom. A pot. My wobbly-kneed body and sagging skin.
I hope she’ll remember.
We never think to miss the things we don’t remember.
Today she watched me stirring chicken and noodles, a question in her eyes. Could I be you someday?
I was a woman over a steaming cauldron.
The broomstick leaned against the corner from yesterday’s catastrophe of shards embedded in grains of sugar on the floor, such a sparkling mess. Will we use the broom again?
Where might that broom take us?
To look at such things and dream of magic. A broom. A pot. My wobbly-kneed body and sagging skin.
I hope she’ll remember.
Witch at the Beach
They never think of a witch at the beach. They buy into stories of full moon magic and working is shadows. They can’t imagine we exist beneath the sun.
We exist.
Some of us are tan, even, though I tend to burn rather than bronze. Still, I enjoy the feel of the sun on my skin, the music of seagulls singing, the gritty grains of sand between my teeth when the wind insists on feeding me.
When the ocean waves, I wave back.
They never think of a witch at the beach. They buy into stories of full moon magic and working is shadows. They can’t imagine we exist beneath the sun.
We exist.
Some of us are tan, even, though I tend to burn rather than bronze. Still, I enjoy the feel of the sun on my skin, the music of seagulls singing, the gritty grains of sand between my teeth when the wind insists on feeding me.
When the ocean waves, I wave back.
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Michael Chin was born and raised in Utica, New York, and currently lives in Georgia with his wife and son. His hybrid chapbook, The Leo Burke Finish, is available now from Gimmick Press and he has work published or forthcoming in journals including The Normal School, Passages North, and Hobart. He works as a contributing editor for Moss. Find him online at miketchin.com or follow him on Twitter @miketchin.
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