C. John Graham

Needle

 
A body mostly water: water in
the bones, the nerves, the straining           

muscle, heart, brain.              

                        *

Water bends a straw
by bending light. This body

one empty straw, with

                        *

a portal between the eyes, a phantom
hatchway above the skull.                                                                 

A dim glimmer

            *

of deskbound lamplight                                                                                 
perishes in interstellar shimmer. Nebulae                                         

elastic

            *

arc the black vacuum, a factory
of stars.      Be

the needle

on the hanging

thread.

C. John Graham lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and until retirement, worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory’s particle accelerator facility. He now serves as a search and rescue pilot and continue a lifelong spiritual inquiry. Accordingly, his work often probes the interlaced boundaries of the technical and transcendental. Louise Glück once expressed admiration for the “originality and strangeness” of his work.