Tucker Bryant

Cellars of Pixie Dust

On my 5th birthday 
my dad puts on a magic show while I nest 
in the palm of our kitchen floor.
I watch as he breathes
a nonsense word into the black 
& white bones of an empty coloring book.
Moments later I thumb through it and 
the flesh of every page is spilling 
over with color.

As I'm still reeling from the punch of 
his first miracle something invisible 
kidnaps his voice mid-sentence and every word 
he reaches for collapses in his windpipes.
He guides my hand to his oaken mouth, motions
for me to pull and I tug a mile of rainbow 
handkerchiefs from his throat. On the tail 
of the last ribbon sputter out the 
syllables that were gasping for air beneath it.

At the end of the evening and
cradled in my first taste of
wonder I stumble to bed drunk
on mystery, eyes swollen with
question marks and dream 
of something huge and impossible
like a hundred-hundred dollars
or car-sized Hot Wheels.

Since then I've stuck 
my nose under every video game 
and plot twist I’ve found and still haven't managed 
to stare that kind of sorcery in the face again but 
the first time I tasted an oxycodone pill I shut 
my eyes for a second and the whole
month disappeared.



Tucker Bryant is a poet and keynote speaker based in San Francisco. He left a role in Marketing at Google to help businesses explore the connections between poetry and innovation. His work, which has garnered millions of views, has featured at TEDx, The Prince's Trust, and dozens of organizations globally.