The Greatest Show
Nicole Callihan

My brother liked to cut me
in half in front of the neighbors

who slipped dimes in the shoebox
and cheered from folding chairs.

His magic was more magical
than his first or third wife’s though

I liked the second who roasted
a pig and drove me on elaborate

roads. She was like a man with
her moods. Her temper tampered

by capfuls of tequila like the ones
Dawn and I used to drink way

out east. Montauk. The end
of the world or was it the beginning?

I married there. Eventually. Carried
cheapish flowers to cut down

costs. He sawed my cousin too.
We girls in our hand-me-down

sequins; him in somebody’s old
black coat. Our rabbit, red-eyed,

panicked in its sturdy cage
as it waited to be revealed.

Winner of the 2023 Tenth Gate Prize and a 2023 Alma Award, Nicole Callihan has two recent poetry collections: chigger ridge (The Word Works 2024) and SLIP (Saturnalia 2025). Other books include This Strange Garment (Terrapin 2023) and the 2019 novella, The Couples. Her work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Tin House, Conduit, The American Poetry Review, and as a Poem-a-Day selection from the Academy of American Poets.