This poem is part of my The Escape Act manuscript. I started that book manuscript during grad school after finding out through some genealogical research that my wife did that I’m related to Harry Houdini. I had always been captivated by vaudeville, escape acts, magic, sleight of hand, the big show and all the language that surrounds performance and illusion, so this was a serendipitous discovery.

I completed enough of the manuscript for it to become my thesis for my creative writing degree, but I never really finished the entire thing. After I graduated in 2016, I was stuck. I had some poems I felt good about (some others I didn’t) and an aching feeling that I had not yet escaped what I needed to—not until I came out as a trans woman in 2023.

I wrote this poem after my Houdini research led to finding out that the only recordings of his voice were on a handful of wax cylinders (owned by magician David Copperfield last I checked). Voice is an interesting topic for a transgender woman who has severe vocal dysphoria... Have fun with that, psychoanalysts!

The poem is below, followed by my video reading. If you like this poem, consider buying me a cup of coffee at ko-fi.com/thepoetmiranda and/or subscribing.

💜Miranda📚

I turn your voice in my handwith the worn wooden crank

of the cylinder phonograph.As the needle tears across

your wax skin, I feel the scratchesagainst the surface of my eardrum—

the fragility of your voice a crackedwindow, a shattering in progress.

Even my indulgence, my listening,fractures the artifact, spreads more scars

across the surface from which you speak.What eternal life is there if even our words

break into a thousand glittering piecesto be swept up, dropped into today's garbage?

I imagine the way your booming orationonce held an audience. Now I hold it,

still rotating in the grip of my hand.