What Rough Beast | Poem for April 7, 2019

Amy Gordon
Need Less to Say

A thimble is required to use a needle.
Poverty keeps you under its thumb.
Holes in your socks, darn them with a needle.
Darn them, the needy.
They’re always needing something.
Dirty needles, lose them in a haystack.
It is easier for a camel to pass through
the eye of a needle than a rich man
to enter the kingdom of God.
Rich men need poor men to use needles.
The eye of a needle cannot see.
The eyes close
when the needle pierces skin.

Hope more, not less.
Use needles to mend holes,
to become whole.

Amy Gordon is the author of numerous books for young readers, including When JFK Was My Father (Houghton Mifflin, 1999) and Painting the Rainbow (Holiday House, 2014), both works of historical fiction haunted by helpful ghosts. Her poems have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Aurorean, Plum, Blue Nib, and in the anthology Poems in the Aftermath (Indolent Books, 2018).

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