Burgess Needle is a Tucson poet whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in the The Hiss Quarterly, Origami Condom, Kritya, Zafusy, Black Mountain Review, Free Verse , Concho River Review, and Raving Dove. He co-edited Prickly Pear/Tucson, a poetry quarterly, and has been a co-director of the summer program of the Southern Arizona Writing Project. Burgess is currently editing a journal he kept as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailand and and is editing a screenplay.

Ebony Saguaros

     by Burgess Needle

The distant city’s incandescence

blurred a thousand galaxies

from the arroyo that night we made love.

I was confounded by ebony saguaros

that scratched the sky until from behind

the Princess’s silver ball the heavens bled

stars enough to outline your shoulders

against palo verde trees

and calm the nervous field mice.

Love me     Love me     love me I said

unable to fathom reasons enough

to ever leave that delirium

that place light touches

before it leaves us forever.

© 2009 Burgess Needle