54 MAGIC WORDS Poof Poof, a puff of magic smoke. -- Ed Dee, 14 Peck Slip (1995) Poof, like presto-chango. -- Randy Wayne White, Twelve Mile Limit (2002) They can make things appear and disappear with poofs and smoke. -- N.E. Bode, The Anybodies (2004) Mystique: "And then, poof! Like magic . . ."15 Poof is its own dazzling puff of smoke, suddenly there one moment and, just as quickly, gone the next. Invariably poof is a puff of smoke conjured by a magician. "He sprinkles his fingers through the air. 'Poof.'"16 Yet as insubstantial as a puff of smoke may be, there's an undeniable concreteness to poof as a magic word. This concreteness reveals itself in how people use poof in a sentence: the most common phrase to follow poof is "just like that!" Just like how? Just like a ma gician makes something disappear -- expertly, instantaneously, convincingly, totally, "for all the world" gone. Another concrete phrase that commonly follows poof is "the next thing you know." Before that elephant had time to take a single pounding step, poof -- the next thing you know Doug Henning had made it vanish into thin air. "The next thing you know" implies "the first thing you know" -- that being the magician's feat, which you witnessed with your very eyes. The spectator has solid knowledge of the magician's abilities. As the illusion's dazzling haze dissipates, the next thing you know is speechless awe expressed through thunderous applause. Meanings: • Appear out of nowhere "Love is the magician of the Universe. It creates everything out of nothing. One moment, it isn't there, and the next -- poof -- it appears in all its splendor, and you greet it with amazement." -- Barbara de Angelis, Real Moments (1994) "I want to make very clear to you that my gardens did not just poof!! appear suddenly overnight." -- Ellen Dugan, Garden Witchery (200 ) "You are the one walking like a ghost -- poof -- here you are." -- Jes sica Shattuck, The Hazards of Good Breeding (200 ) "Within the concept of self-creation is the idea that once there was nothing -- pure nonbeing . . . and then, 'poof,' there was something, like the rabbit out of the magician's hat. Only what happens is more stupendous than the feats of prestidigitation. In this magic show the rabbit comes from nothing by himself. There is no magician to bring him forth, no hat out 15 P.C. Cast, Goddess of Light (2005) 16 Diana Abu-Jaber, Crescent (200 ). Similarly: "'Poof,' I said, and waggled my fingers as if I were casting a spell" (Paul Watkins, The Forger [2000]).