How Houdini Died

Lotta, lotta misconceptions
about how old Harry Houdini died.

There’s the story about him
getting punched in the gut

by a football player
and dying of a ruptured

appendix. Some people
think he drowned

trying to swim up
Niagara Falls. Jesus,

no, that was not it.
That’s just fucking

stupid. Houdini
was daring. I’m

stupid. You don’t even
want to know

how I’m gonna die
and I don’t either.

It’ll be some stupid way, though,
chasing a hat or a girl, or breaking

up a dog-fight.
Anyway, Houdini

actually died of exposure,
by all accounts, in his car

trying to cross a Walmart
parking lot. It was 5

old ladies in riding wheelchairs,
a long line of stacked-up

shopping carts,
and just the crosswalk

in general that finally
did him in. So, what I’m saying is,

9 times out of 10
it won’t be the train

you’re trying to outrun,
or the bus you’re trying to jump,

it won’t even be the love
in the word “unloved,”

it’ll be that one mundane
thing, that one afternoon

you didn’t see coming,
that finally gives you

that last, kind little shove.

–November 12, 2019