妈 Had This Needle
Perhaps the girl makes due with the time been dealt.
She wears her mother’s old buttoned tee and low-rised jeans.
Call it nostalgic and have her
be molded by where a body used to be.
Call it timeless
and have her carve shapeness into where time washed the body out.
Fill it with something more prepared to be alive.
The girl fashions a life from when
the world seemed conquerable
to a woman who had not yet
been conquered by the world.
The woman once owned a ragdoll that told her
Make sure you stuff me with a cry.
She tosses the needle up into the sky and
watches it fracture into more stars.
By Celine Qin
Biography
Celine Qin, an emerging Chinese-Californian poet drifting between Sacramento and the Sierra Nevadas, writes as not only a person, but people. Navigating what she calls a parceled girlhood, Qin forges, sobs, and breathes for the women who have taught her the resilience in watching things happen, and among their parcels she discovers her own revelating agency. She is also a grassroots organizer, enjoyer of music, and a lover of all things anyone can find beautiful, which, to her especially, means Ponderosa pine trees.