it’s as if someone is hanging out a long sateen scarf
or a still-glowing carcass,
reaching up to slip its muscular loop
over a hook of steam.

He’s a toad at the apex of its rubbery leap,
a toad become aware of its true self,
a-quarter-turned into a swan, the lichen-pocked flesh 
uncreasing, unrolling, unpimpling
into a luminous chart.

He is marble being split down its centre.
He’s a slanted wood-and-string rack,
dressed
in newly caught sparkling fish.

Somewhere, a whole coven,
perhaps an entire elusive demographic
are juicing themselves to mist
just imagining this scene.

Oh!
The Magician is clean.
The Magician is jetwashed.
The Magician is barnacled no more.