CORI A. WINROCK

Instructions for Dematerializing
     for the disinterment of Harry Houdini

1
Feet Locked in Stocks
but your departed
wife has been cautiously levitating
nested escapeboxes out
from each other, one at a time: sleight of
matryoshka hand

: : :

You became the dreamt
trapeze husband, the properly applied
force of a shoestring. O handcuffed
secret, our unrevealer, how many locks
you’ve left for us to pop
open to find

2
Suspended in Midair from Ankles
the mind refuses to exhume
your illusion, containers of glass-
and-steel: the body lifted
right out of the body; earth
left open as an eye
socket after
the coffin is pulled

: : :

Tell us—will your bones
be laced, lined
with arsenic and the old
deep-believings of séanced
revenge? will we uncover fistfuls
of sleeping-dirt, the incessant
chill of wanting left
wanting—answers
within answers within

3
Lowered into Tank Overflowing
with water your wife wrote
letters, dissolved: Dear
Ehrich, Dear Prince of Air,
Master of Cards, Dear Manacled

: undid each one until dis-
apparition, until she reached
right through the din of tricks,
of history, of death, into dear de-
materialized, dear my lovely
who-do-I-need
but you