Sleeping Beauty Loves The Needle
No thread in your needle, just the spindling
damselflies dart through cracks in the ceiling.
The bird at the window tells you to drop the gun,
put on your nightgown and drown. This bird holds
a branch of judgment and tells you you’ll be the one
standing with a sword when the stars rain down.
She pressed her face to the pillow. She fell
for the hired gun. She ended up hungry, an angel.
Her two white feet cold as her heart, while
her pages all ran clean. No more time for kindling,
sweetheart, better make that fire sing.
—
This selection comes from Jeannine Hall Gailey’s Unexplained Fevers, available from New Binary Press. Purchase your copy here!
Jeannine Hall Gailey is the Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington, and the author of Becoming the Villainess (Steel Toe Books, 2006) and She Returns to the Floating World (Kitsune Books, 2011) which was an Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal finalist in 2012. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, and in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in journals such as The Iowa Review, American Poetry Review and Prairie Schooner. She volunteers as an editorial consultant for Crab Creek Review and currently teaches part-time at the MFA program at National University. Her personal website is www.webbish6.com.
Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.
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