Featured Poet - Sandra Beasley

Sandra Beasley

* Chicks Dig Poetry *







Sandra Beasley is a Washington, D.C. based poet and author. She has two volumes of poetry: I Was the Jukebox, (winner of the 2009 Barnard Women Poets Prize) and Theories of Falling, as well as the memoir Don't Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life. Her prose has appeared in the Wall Street Journal and Psychology Today among other publications.


Cherry Tomatoes

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 head, said
You and your mother. 

Now, a city girl, I ease one 
loose from its siblings,
from its clear plastic coffin,
place it on my tongue.

Just to try. The smooth
surface resists, resists,
and erupts in my mouth: 
seeds, juice, acid, blood

of a perfect household.
The way, when I finally 
went sailing, my stomach 
was rocked from inside

out. Little boat, big sea.
Handful of skinned sunsets.

from: Theories of Falling. Copyright 2008. 

Vocation

For six months I dealt Baccarat in a casino. 
For six months I played Brahms in a mall. 
For six months I arranged museum dioramas;
my hands were too small for the Paleolithic
and when they reassigned me to lichens, I quit. 
I type ninety-one words per minute, all of them 
Help. Yes, I speak Dewey Decimal.
I speak Russian, Latin, a smattering of Tlingit. 
I can balance seven dinner plates on my arm.
All I want to do is sit on a veranda while 
a hard rain falls around me. I’ll file your 1099s. 
I’ll make love to strangers of your choice. 
I’ll do whatever you want, as long as I can do it 
on that veranda. If it calls you, it’s your calling, 
right? Once I asked a broker what he loved 
about his job, and he said Making a killing. 
Once I asked a serial killer what made him 
get up in the morning, and he said The people.

from: I Was the Jukebox: Poems. Copyright 2010.

Flour Is Firm 

The Traveler’s Vade Mecum, line 4234

Baking two parts flour to one part water

could stop a bullet. So good soldiers

carried their hardtack over their hearts.

Break it down with a rifle butt, flood it,

fry it in pig fat to make hellfire stew.

Gnaw it raw and praise the juice.

Does wheat prepare for this as it grows,

seeking the light in a half-thawed field?

Do stalks know their strength is merely

in their number? What is ground down

we name flour in promise that it will be

made useful. Otherwise, it’s just dust.

Sheet iron crackers.

Teeth-dullers.

Would you call it starving, if a man dies

with hardtack still tucked in his pocket?

Can you call it food, if the bullet comes only

at the moment he gives in and swallows?

Source: Poetry (July/August 2013).