Beginning With a Line by Adrienne Rich

By: AR Dugan

The body tells the truth in its rush of cells

The body says hush now

places a finger to my lips

Says it was always the plan

The plan must be the truth

Imagine speaking silence

The body does not know

two things can be true

at the same time

The body’s arc is long but

sometimes truth is an accident

The body grows a tumor

The tumor grows a body

that both exists & not

In a curtain of black drape

a star explodes bright &

it’s gone More than gone

If space is a brain

each star is a tumor

exploding in absence

If a body is a galaxy

with a truth at the center

it’s thirsty It’s insatiable

If truth is a time traveller

it must outrun light & itself

Foster-child of silence & slow time


I’ve never seen a truth more real

than the MRI scan of my brain tumor

showing what’s there & not

No one said you must accept this

The body reads the image

Imagine not blaming yourself

If the body’s plan is true

it must be beautiful too

It must be It must be

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AR Dugan is author of the chapbooks Wanted: Comedy, Addicts (Cathexis Northwest Press, 2021), Call / Response (Finishing Line Press, 2019) and has an MFA from Emerson College. His poetry can be seen in a number of literary magazines and reviews, recently in the anthology Wild Gods from New Rivers Press.