Legend has it that Houdini, the son of a rabbi, picked his first lock because he wanted a piece of boysenberry pie his mother was keeping dead-bolted in the pantry. A busted closet means trouble. Doesn't it seem that as soon as you get one thing fixed in the house something else falls apart? Say, I might as well punish myself for mommy's cancer, because who else is there at the foot of the bed to discomfit. Bedrooms are nice in all-white. Sheets, curtains, lamps, laser-white metal. The most important place for a favorite painting is opposite the bed. The last impression you see at night, the first when you rise. Upstairs the house has an expiration date, just as Henry James did. Poor Henry was criticized for not liking dumb people. They say that before he died he thought he was Napoleon. And it turned out that he did know a lot about Napoleon, just not the right sorts of things that made dying easier. Houdini, James, Napoleon. Neither Houdini nor James liked to be called by their first names, but Napoleon loved his first name so much that he destroyed many lives in order to keep it popular. Three great men, three great holes. Like in the pretzel. Medieval monks gave pretzels to children who had memorized their Bible verses and prayers. To reinforce a lesson: the three holes in the pretzel represent the Christian trinity. Today there are 28 different kinds of pretzels in the world and that number continues, in fits and starts, to grow.

Mark Yakich's first book of poems, Unrelated Individuals Forming a Group Waiting to Cross, was a winner of the 2003 National Poetry Series and is available from Penguin.