Sandra Beasley is the author of three collections of poetry: Count the Waves (W.W. Norton, 2015); I Was the Jukebox, (W.W. Norton, 2010), selected by Joy Harjo for the 2009 Barnard Women Poets Prize; and Theories of Falling (New Issues, 2008), which won the 2007 New Issues Poetry Prize judged by Marie Howe. Her poetry has appeared in Poetry, Slate, and The […]
Little bastards of vine. Little demons by the pint. Red eggs that never hatch, just collapse and rot. When my mom told me to gather their grubby bodies into my skirt, I’d cry. You and your father, she’d chide–– the way, each time I kicked and wailed against sailing, my dad shook his […]
Wasting. A hunger so great I bite through a pacifier. My mother tries to fix me with more milk, more milk. Doctors run tests on my squalling body. No breast is safe, no cowgoatsoy milk. I nurse on apple juice. My parents agree on one rule: Don’t break the baby. They pour quarters into […]
Bullet dodged, meant your thrust. Another: Load the gun. You bit my shoulder and I thought Turn, turn and fire— those nights we barely surfaced from sleep to go at it, pulling each into the other’s half-dreamed agenda: Liftoff. Touchdown in ten yards. Umbrella, unfurling in hard rain. For two […]
I’m fluid and omnivorous, the casual kiss. I’ll knock up your oysters. I’ll eat your diamonds. I’m a mutt, no one thing at all, just the size that counts and if you’re animal small enough, come; if you’re vegetable small enough, come; if you’re mineral small enough, come. Mothers, brush me from the hands […]
after Erik Satie For an hour I forgot my fat self, my neurotic innards, my addiction to alignment. For an hour I forgot my fear of rain. For an hour I was a salamander shimmying through the kelp in search of shore, and under his fingers the notes slid loose from […]
He paid me to carry his words in my mouth— to give him the cut of sky, the color of beef. To give him please. To give him thank you. To give him tea kettle, spider, tango. I ate at his table. I moved into his basement. I made a dictionary of sighs— when to […]
We must not look for poetry in poems. —Donald Revell You must not skirt the issue wearing skirts. You must not duck the bullet using ducks. You must not face the music with your face. Headbutting, don’t use your head. Or your butt. You must not use a house to build a […]