This week we're proud to feature "The Magician" by Alex Grant, which originally appeared in TMR 31:4 (Winter).  The poem is excerpted from a chapbook-length series called "The Circus Poems."  Alex Grant's full-length manuscript, Fear of Moving Water, a recent finalist for several major poetry prizes, will be released by Wind Publications in late 2009.  His first collection, Chains & Mirrors  (NCWN/Harperprints) won the 2006 Randall Jarrell Poetry Prize and the 2007 Oscar Arnold Young Award (Best North Carolina poetry collection), and his second collection, The White Book, was released in 2008 by Main Street Rag Publishing.  His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in a number of journals and anthologies, including Arts & Letters, Best New Poets 2007, the Connecticut Review, Nimrod and Seattle Review. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with his wife, Tristi, his dangling participles and his Celtic fondness for excess. He can be found on the web at: www.redroom.com/author/alex-grant.