Alicia Rebecca Myers

April Fools

Our realtor says we need to give the illusion
of not living in the house while still living in it.
Houdini’s vanishing elephant never left
the cabinet; a trainer merely pulled an interior
curtain. Our rooms resist obscuring. Outside,
our flagship magnolia conceals flowering bowls
in fuzzy bracts. Maybe I’ll eat a bud, a taste like
cardamom-ginger, another degree of subterfuge.
I might take the whole house into my mouth and
swallow it, so that in Colorado, I can be a nesting
woman nesting. One year, I gave the illusion
of living in this world without living in it—
could barely muster the energy to release
a dove to see if the waters had receded, or rather
send it inward, where no joy found purchase.
But now, in spite of the world, I want to be fully
present. I can laugh when one thing turns out
to be another. When prospective buyers enter
our house, let them feel the pulsing of kitsch
and memory behind every closed drawer, warm
to the touch, a seance to contact the living. 

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Alicia Rebecca Myers' poetry has appeared in publications that include Best New Poets, River Styx, Rattle, Sixth Finch and Raleigh Review. Her chapbook of poems, My Seaborgium (Brain Mill Press, 2016), was winner of the Mineral Point Chapbook Series. Her first full-length book, Warble, was chosen by former Kansas Poet Laureate Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg as winner of the 2024 Birdy Poetry Prize and was published in January 2025 (Meadowlark Press). She lives with her family in upstate NY.