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The Craft

Elaine Equi

Many people want to find magic,
like a new car or computer,
want to put magic to work
making more money or keeping
them young and immortal.
These are the same things
people have always wanted
which is how magic grew
into capitalism with magic symbols
printed on every dollar.
If only someone would find
a new use for this old technology —
would magic become magical again?

Elaine Equi is the author of numerous poetry books including, Click and Clone (Coffee House Press, 2011).

Themes

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Lee

When the teacher asked the girl if there was a nickname she’d like to be called, some voice in her spoke right up and said, “Lee,” which was strange because no one had ever called her Lee. In her whole life, she had never known a Lee except for Sara Lee, the famous baker whose cheesecake her mother sometimes served to company. So when the teacher said, “Alright then, Lee,” she had to train herself to respond and look as if she really were this Lee character. Lee, she was sure, was a guy who rode horses — a cowboy-loner type.

Elaine Equi

2025

I Don’t Wish to be a Vampire

With centuries of memory
stored in a youthful body.

It is — or could be — such a pleasure
if we didn’t fear it so much,

to get old and indulge in
subversive acts of dawdling,

withering, forgetting with impunity,
letting go of ambition served too long,

its bittersweet ligatures finally breaking
down and dissolving.

While others feverishly train
body and brain in gyms,

let me cultivate the corpse flower,
listen to it like a radio in a small room

Elaine Equi

2025

The Thing Is

What is the difference between objects and things?

Things, I think, have less personality.

These days, all objects are antiques—hearken back to an era of hands handling them.

Playing cards, wooden matches, buttons, plush stuffed bears—we recognize them from the still lifes where they once quivered.

They were—are—tools, curios, refugees from the modernist era.

Of course, we still have these things. But now they are like us, just things.

They no longer celebrate their secret identity—the inner life once bequeathed upon even objects.

Elaine Equi

2019

Poems

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The Craft

More by this poet

Lee

I Don’t Wish to be a Vampire

The Thing Is

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