Sample Poems by Rachel Dacus
Portrait of Lady with Red Flowers
Her portrait stare is stark as the silver swords
they dashed beneath as they left the altar. Blurred,
the unfolded hands want to reach toward
the viewer. After the wedding he painted her
just once, in this ladder-back chair,
her shoulders unwarmed by the splashy red blooms
of her crepe dress. Her husband’s green eyes spared
her nothing, but she would learn to assume
no space, to be concave, to give
way to taunts and fears, to sit or stand
still as moss and ignore the bluster. To live
in the canvas weave, shaded by his hand,
hardening in layers of turpentine and oil.
Never to be framed, yet almost unspoiled.
My Father’s Self-Portrait from Art
School
How he must have hated the assignment. The strokes
fight the canvas for control of the line.
Brushes clenched, he steps back from the streaks
and peers at himself with almond eye, malign
glance a javelin to shatter any mirror.
Here it skewers itself, the face in gloom,
walls reflecting light. His palette is clear
and bright, as is the palette knife’s gleam
and the pigments, squeezed out in rich bloom.
Tools bright against his frown. Arrowing,
each bristle hair points to the harrowing
his future wives will take. Though the rooms
and brushwork both will soften, his unvarying
will can be seen in the eye’s narrowing.
Thunder-Edged
Sun under chin,
she rambles after them
as they garden the hillside.
Brushed with light, she rides
low among slim stems,
thunder-edged.
Slipping through holes
in wind, she rolls
under a flower’s hem.
Buttercup, they call
her, but tuck her into a null
crib to listen to thin
mosquito hours. Again
and again, no one.
The child’s ear hums
with moon’s footfall
on the hill, a cloud-tall
lady who kindles the lights.
By day, rolled up tight,
she is given to those who prick her
scalp with needle fire. She blurs
and shrinks into thickets,
rooting fists on stone.
In the shimmer of alone,
how she spins
light, how sparks flee
the first wound, how it brims.
Horse on the Lawn
On the lawn a hobby horse
rocks on a metal spring,
wind-galloping. His painted
eyes cannot see the girl
who skulks among trees,
waiting to loft on his leap.
She cannot see her mother
in spider-light brooding
over ironing, pulling sheets
between the mangle’s plates
while stories above, the father
measures the ocean with a flat stick.
He cannot see the linen weep
between hot rollers, fall
in folds, smiling days
piled white to the sky.
He prisms the house,
planes its corners, smudges
his gray matters on walls,
sanding corners so no one
Can see around them
to the horse’s stare
and the child who breaks
into a gallop, hooves billowing.