Phillip Watts Brown

THE ESCAPE ARTIST

– after René Magritte

Some days I find a storm 
in a water glass. A bird 

is a blade on the kitchen table, 
wing unfolded. I crack 

an egg to free the gold 
acacia bloom inside. 

Even awake, I levitate 
a few inches above 

my life—just the illusion 
of dreaming. 

In a dark hat and coat
I could be anyone.

Red sky. The sun and I 
cross toward night, 

that lightless city. A river 
whispers below the bridge. 

I breathe the rose
before I see it: billowed, 

white, a cloud of smoke 
to escape in. Like a door

the self swings open—
I disappear into another 

country. My silhouette 
frames the view: 

a thin moon, some trees, 
and at the heart a house,

windows glowing 
against the blue.

Phillip Watts Brown received his MFA in poetry from Oregon State University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in several journals, including The Common, Tahoma Literary Review, Grist, Camas, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Rust + Moth, and Psaltery & Lyre. He has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and was a finalist for the 2020 Orison Anthology Award. He and his husband live in Logan, Utah where he works at an art museum and writes poems during lunch breaks.