Kingdom
by Rachel Dacus
After the moon's copper eclipse, morning clouds cavalcade along the hilltops, trumpeting the golden news of the end of the world's long night. Brava, brava! The thunderclouds rise like hooded cobras and drive me out at dawn, leaving the dizzy spiders spinning. I live more and more now in the transparencies of wind, translating the click and whistle of black-lidded birds on fence posts. The day's gifts plummet around me: lightning-lopped limbs, split bark maddened with moss, the roaring violets. In my pocket, the pen rustles, giving out a muffled, prophetic blast. I listen to the gliss words make before leaving my mouth and sweeping the ground with their wings. Let the old fears flare their black hoods, fanged and white-mouthed. Let them sway like flowers on stems, I wave back to the sun's attendants, silken and shredded pennants of light. This open housing suits me, as do the trees' nodded compliments. Let the cobras bite as they will. Here's my breast. The sting won't last. I'm taking back my kingdom.
Rachel Abramson Dacus' other collections of poetry are Earth Lessons, Femme au Chapeau, and a chapbook, Another Circle of Delight. Her poems, stories, essays, reviews, and poet interviews have appeared in Atlanta Review, Boulevard, Fringe Magazine, Many Mountains Moving, Prairie Schooner, Rattapallax, and many other journals. She lives in Walnut Creek, California. Read more about her at her website.
When asked to name her favourite fruit, Rachel replied, "cherries!"
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