Entries From A Terrible Poet's Thesaurus #11: Magician

Magician (n.): an illusionist who performs tricks for the amusement of an audience hoping to be fooled

The occupation of any lover who ever hurt you . You've never made a mistake . They tricked you . No one has ever cut you in half you fully-limbed ableist . You trapezist lamenting heights . No one wants to hear how you pulled a city's worth of bedsheets from your lover's sleeves while they slept . A politician who leaves office with more accomplishments than scandal . The survivor of a tragedy whom no one suspects was the cause . A friend with tickets to offer you to every sold out show who doesn't even want to sleep with you or smoke your weed . The family member who supports you from the wings while making your most valuable possessions disappear . You . Us . Everyone who has ever asked a stranger to volunteer to vouch that their illusions are real . Every volunteer who falsely pledged allegiance for a brief moment in the spotlight and not only never got caught but is often regarded as victim rather than accomplice

I'm compiling the Terrible Poets' Thesaurus by reading poems by unfamiliar writers and jotting down unusual word choices. Once I find a term three times, I attempt to define it by deconstructing it as it appears to me in the context of the poems in which they're used, which are unlikely to be the way the authors intended them. Alternately, I look at my own poems and find words that I overuse and attempt to imagine how others might interpret them.