Prick of the Spindle: Poetry: Gailey: Sleeping Beauty Loves the Needle

Sleeping Beauty Loves the Needle
By Jeannine Hall Gailey

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.

Jeannine Hall Gailey's first book of poetry, Becoming the Villainess, was published by Steel Toe Books. Poems from the book were featured on NPR's The Writer's Almanac and on Verse Daily; two were included in 2007's The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. She was awarded a 2007 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize for Poetry and a 2007 Washington State Artist Trust GAP grant. Her poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, The Columbia Poetry Review, and Ninth Letter. She volunteers as an editorial consultant for Crab Creek Review and currently teaches at the MFA program at National University.