Rachel Dacus

Wearing My Art Inside

Strip in a loud, bright room, surrendering
clothes, and jewelry—a watch, rings, necklace,
glasses, shoes. Lie back on a metal gurney.
Let yourself be wheeled down a corridor
past paintings of Impressionist landscapes
while beads of medication trickle
through the IV line stunk into your wrist.
Slowly fall into bottomless dark, a crevasse,
a midnight, a tectonic fault.

Titanium will be implanted in your spine—
screws and rods to keep you upright
and prevent flexing in the wrong ways.
A nurse will lay the pieces out on a tray
as a jeweler arrays diamonds on velvet.
Their sheen catches the room’s lights.

After, awakening as in a hammered marimba,
vibrating with pain. You pulse to its rhythms
for twelve months, then stand bejeweled within,
knowing your gems are tucked, yourself
a half-inch nearer the sky, a shining
extravagance of architecture inside.

Rachel Dacus is the author of seven novels and four poetry collections. Her poetry, stories, and essays have appeared in Boulevard, Gargoyle, Prairie Schooner, Eclectica and Image: Art, Faith, and Mystery. Her poems are in anthologies Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California and Radiant DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English. She enjoys living in the San Francisco Bay Area, with its open space trails where she can walk her Silky Terrier. More on her website www.racheldacus.net.