John Hutchinson Explains the Hutchinson Effect

by Scott Hughes

I can levitate
a sixty-pound cannon ball.
A cement block. A broom.
I don’t know how. I just
know I can. I can fuse steel
with wood. I make crystals
inside metals rearrange
and reform. With no force
at all I can split lead pipes.
I’ve built a room
surrounded by Tesla coils.
It’s all on video, and even
the Los Alamos guys
say I didn’t fake it. They
say they want to see
for themselves. But I can’t
work when they’re around—
they want to measure
each second—they slow
everything down into steps.
If they could just see—
the nails twirling in the air;
the bulbs of mercury
floating from a cup;
as if shaped
by invisible hands,
the way a wire will loop
into a spring like a snake.

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In 2004, Scott Hughes received an MFA in creative writing from Georgia College & State University. His work has appeared in apt, Chiaroscuro, Crab Creek Review, Crazyhorse, elimae, Exquisite Corpse, The Raleigh Quarterly, Redivider, Strange Horizons, and Word Riot. The first novel in his young adult fantasy series, Magellana and the Mergonauts, is being represented by LJK Literary Management.

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Back to Issue One: Fall 2008