Precious
Copper keeps life from my womb; aluminum
fills my pores, silver my teeth. My blood won’t hold iron,
so I take it daily. Food brings a sickness I can’t measure
under my tongue, only on my waning waist. Some metal
belongs in the body. The day a grate raised my skirt
on the street, I noticed only one rush of air between ore
and whore. The boy who learns to caress his face with a blade
will grow into a man I’ll pay to slice my skin with steel. Beauty
is no alchemy: it merely means making space for more things
that shine. Like the ancient statues men scrapped for daggers.
Like powder packed into bullets, their touch so intimate
it kills. Like any body in this millennium, I’ll survive
in silicon chips after death. Until then, lead me
somewhere precious. Guide me with ungloved hands.
Copyright © 2026 by Kira Tucker. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 31, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.
“‘Precious’ inhabits the balance between violence and tenderness, exploring how metal impacts our lives. From aluminum antiperspirants and copper contraceptives to dietary minerals and dental fillings, metals make up who we are. Wielding steel tools—a barber’s razor, a piercer’s needle, a surgeon’s scalpel—we touch each other with intimate precision. The same metals resurface in cycles of male-driven destruction—the monuments of antiquity retooled as bronze arms; World War II’s ‘wolfram’ largely re-engineered into U.S. and Israeli missiles. With heavy metals at the core of our world, as common in cosmetics as in our water supply, I always come back to the question: What truly remains precious?”
—Kira Tucker
Kira Tucker
