
WHEN THE NEEDLE ENTERS by Laura Lippman
the artery and the catheter threads
up to the heart.
words can't be started or staunched
until the drugs are cleared
days later.
The poem unfolds with the pain
ballooning inside me like my mother's
—old grief— radiating through my arms and neck.
On the screen nobs blow and sputter
marking time 'til the matter is settled—
nattering mobs simmer and flow.
No margin of myself to contain
I seep out of wards into words
until the wound is stitched and the
blood staunched.
I have no excuse to offer as rock
crumbles to soil unless fall bulbs
somehow presage spring tulips,
then dahlias of late summer.
I hope to outlive the earth's rebirth
and survive the rubble and strum
of whatever future unfolds this year
from the drang of our present clanging
to the dirge floating on the lift of the sea.