The Point of the Needle
- The Point of the Needle
Since you got to behead each hollyhock crown with your round guillotine of a mouth— I hope you get to spin inside your paper house. Emerge noctuidae, owlet moth, laying your eggs in leaves at night. That you might finish your stitch— Replicate yourself in time so you are always present— each egg a deposit— an echo-pearl of “you” along time’s string— That my soul might be allowed to flourish— Make a success of threading flesh, to participate again in time, on long arcs between sets of plunge, even though it hurt— [End Page 77] to be born and die— it loved to ride the point of the needle— [End Page 78]
Dana Levin is the author of In the Surgical Theatre (1999), Wedding Day (2005), and Sky Burial (2011), all from Copper Canyon Press. Her poetry and essays have appeared recently in the New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, American Poetry Review, and Poetry. A recipient of fellowships and awards from the Rona Jaffe, Whiting, and Guggenheim foundations, Levin teaches at Santa Fe University of Art and Design in New Mexico.
