“[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.