I Was the Jukebox: Poems (Paperback)
“[Beasley’s] lightness works best when it dapples her darkness—and when her darkness, as it often does, feels truly deep.”—Abigail Deutsch, Poetry
The winner of the 2009 Barnard Women Poets Prize—“These poems are fresh, crisp, and muscular. They are decisive and fearless. Every object, icon, or historical moment has a soul with a voice. In these poems these soulful ones elbow their way to the surface of the page, smartly into the contemporary now.”—Joy Harjo, prize citation
from “The Piano Speaks”
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 my belly in a long jellyrope of eggs
that took root in the mud.
Sandra Beasley is a recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment of Arts and the author of three previous poetry collections, including the Barnard Women Poets Prize–winning I Was the Jukebox. She lives in Washington, DC.