Where there is a nick of time
The Secret
the most American poem
What’s the most beautiful?
A gun, taken
Out of the grasp of the hand that would have fired
A bullet through and through, a gun passive again,
Mechanics potential, nothing more. The metal
Wants to lose the shape of the cast.
A bullet, taken
Out of viscera that are waiting for the needle-driver,
The suture, for an eye to see what could be
Again, organized. Spleen in its capsule,
Gut untroubled, wise as a cat. Kidneys peeing.
The steering wheel,
Round and rigid, taken as talisman, trisected,
The world divided into parts like Gaul. The traffic light
Turning green like the fuse that drove a flower,
Like mown grass, absinthe seething in its corked bottle.
The way home, the patient alive, intubated,
Lungs eager for the oxygen, lips pursed pink.
A hand on the blanket, able to be picked up and held.
You can choose.
It’s good to have a choice.
The woman in the car is a prize-winner.
It hasn’t occurred to her that her observation,
Watching the children’s games, sniffing the air
For something other than salt, the drunk musk
Of exhaust, wishing for nutmeg and sumac,
Could ever be a crime. She belongs, they don’t.
The officer would assume she had a flat, a warning
Light on the dash the color of the sun
She imagines the men remember when they look up.
Her people have been here generations
Of clapboard and low stone walls that thread
The poor farmland, mimic the shore.
She is curious about the refugees and wants a taste,
A chance at the truth. She hasn’t learned the word
Miguen means feather, which nouns are ignoble.
Daisy Bassen is a poet and practicing physician who graduated from Princeton University’s Creative Writing Program and completed her medical training at The University of Rochester and Brown. Her work has been published in Oberon, McSweeney’s, and [PANK] among other journals. She was the winner of the So to Speak 2019 Poetry Contest, the 2019 ILDS White Mice Contest and the 2020 Beullah Rose Poetry Prize. She was nominated for the 2019, 2021, and 2022 Best of the Net Anthology and for a 2019, 2020, and 2023 Pushcart Prize. She lives in Rhode Island with her family.
