Sara Moore Wagner

REGULAR MAGIC

I pull a string from the middle of my palm
in that way you do for someone else 

where you run your fingers over so gently that 
a pinch feels connected to a thread you can pull 

and pull out. My father taught me how, 
and then, how to crack an egg on a head,

let the yolk tickle down the back, 
how to pull off a thumb, 

how to spray vinegar in the garden,
to coax the fattest, maddest hen off 

her egg, to fry the egg in butter, 
to break it open at the top 

so it spills out even. To not pour what’s left 
down the drain or leave the water on. 

We should protect the water. We should 
be able to trust our fathers, carrying us 

to bed in the night over a body of water, 
that we’ll get to a shore and call it a bed, 

that he’ll lie down next to us, close enough 
we can put our hands on his fuzzy cheeks.

Father, thank you for bringing me, too. 
In the river I pull a string from my palm, then his, 

tie it to the circling vulture, to the nearest cloud, 
to the hawk whose body is so stretched out

it could be an imaginary creature, unicorn
in that book of unicorns where you have to find

the one who’s been speaking to you. She’s there 
as a shadow behind the sky. 

Sara Moore Wagner lives in West Chester, OH with her husband and three small children. She is the recipient of a 2019 Sustainable Arts Foundation award, and the author of the chapbooks Tumbling After (forthcoming from Red Bird Chapbooks) and Hooked Through (2017). Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in many journals including Cimarron, Third Coast, Poet Lore, Waxwing, The Cincinnati Review, and Nimrod, among others. She has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart prize and Best of the Net. Find her at www.saramoorewagner.com.