DC PLACES ISSUE Carly Sachs   JACK IN THE PULPIT NO. 4 (from the painting with the same name, The National Gallery, Washington DC) She held herself open, labia major, lapis lazuli, she thought of the desert, the way the land opened to nothingness, an endless nude. She painted herself in shades of browns and pinks. When night fell, she saw herself as blue- violet midnight, orchid intoxicated, labyrinth. Blackness, the end of metaphor. She was burning, a single line of white light she had not seen it like this before. She did not know whether she was painting herself or flower, how she had wanted to see herself mid-chrysalis, more than its reflection, chimera of herself. She dreamt of buds bursting, of someone peeling back the parts of her. She thought of the thin translucent green of lettuce as she imagined his hand as he let the petals fall: he loves me, he loves me not.   Carly Sachs teaches Creative Writing at George Washington University. Her first collection of poems, the steam sequence, won the 2006 Washington Writers Publishing House prize. With Reb Livingston, she curates The Burlesque Poetry Hour at Bar Rouge in Dupont Circle.   Published in Volume 7, Number 3, Summer 2006.