Beasley, Sandra

United States, (b. 1980)

THE VOW

But never for us the flitch of bacon though,
That some may win in Essex at Dunmow.

  1. So promises the old wives’ tale,
  2. a covenant according to Chaucer:
  3. that if tomorrow I trek to Dunmow Church
  4. and swear before God and congregation
  5. not a fight, no single quarrel,
  6. in 366 days not even once wishing
  7. to be un-married to you,
  8. that hog is ours for the taking.
  9.  
  10. My love, what
  11. limp victory that would be,
  12.  
  13. sweet silence of perfect agreement
  14. as we swing a pork trophy between us,
  15. walking the many miles homethe
  16. fatback won, the battle lost.
  17.  
  18. I reserve my right to a good spat,
  19. to the meat’s spit in flame.
  20.  
  21. I take joy in choosing you again and again.

© Sandra Beasley. Made to Explode: poems. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. (2021).

The Lifting

  1. In England, an unwelcome guest
  2. was served mutton’s cheap, tough cut.
  3.  
  4. If he lingered the next morning,
  5. he was given the shoulder again, cold.
  6.  
  7. An ocean away, men of North Carolina
  8. stoked hickory fires. Why wouldn’t
  9.  
  10. they reach for a swell called the picnic?
  11. Who doesn’t drool for an animal
  12.  
  13. so savory-strange that it carries its butt
  14. on its arm? Let us raise the shield
  15.  
  16. of appetite, let us bleed hot vinegar,
  17. let us separate the meat with our fingers.
  18.  
  19. All a hog asks is total immersion. We
  20. are the ones who shame it as wallowing.

© Sandra Beasley. Gravy #50: Winter Reading. The quarterly journal of the Southern Foodways Alliance, December 23, 2013.

PROHIBITION TOAST

  1. You charge a buck to see the blind tiger;
  2. I’ll pay a quarter to see the blind pig.
  3.  
  4. Here’s to the laws shimmied up and over—
  5. Here’s to the hosts who match swig for swig—
  6. Gin at the door is served complimentary;
  7. two more, we’ll be complimenting the gin.
  8.  
  9. Give me an address where no cops can find us.
  10. Call me a rover, and pour us again.

© Sandra Beasley. Gravy #50: Winter Reading. The quarterly journal of the Southern Foodways Alliance, December 23, 2013.
Editor’s Note:

On “Prohibition Toast” Beasley has said:

Two of my favorite bars are 630 miles apart: the Blind Pig, in Oxford, Mississippi, and the Blind Tiger in Charleston, South Carolina. Their echoing names inspired me to read up on my Prohibition history. Speakeasies often worked by charging at the door to see an animal, exotic or barnyard; the home-stilled libation they put in your hand was, of course, the true motive for the visit.

THE TRUTH ABOUT BACON

  1. First, we must strip it of its easy name—
  2.  
  3. No one ventures into a summer storm
  4. for the sake of holding an umbrella.
  5.  
  6. Each pack an act of transubstantiation,
  7. the profane returned holy in heat,
  8. body gone kinetic in the pan
  9. & damn, who would call it comfort food—
  10.  
  11. This flesh, this fat, this sizzle?
  12. Let it be anything but comfortable. Let this
  13.  
  14. be the permission you’ve been waiting for.

© Sandra Beasley.

THE CATALOGUE

  1. Rubbed in cayenne. Rubbed in cinnamon.
  2. Rubbed with white sugar, then with brown.
  3. Rubbed in capers, in great Muppet capers,
  4. by animal and vegetable, mineral-rubbed.
  5. Brined in dill that thinks it is coriander.
  6. Brined in maple syrup. Brined in coffee.
  7. Brined like the Pennsylvania Dutch do:
  8. oak-barreled in brine for five weeks
  9. before hung by a chimney with care.
  10. Hung by the rafters. Hung in the locker.
  11. Hung by sawhorse in the best friend’s lot.
  12. Hung like a firework in the July sky—
  13. until the pellicle forms, that unsung
  14. tease of protein that hugs the smoke—
  15. Smoke from hickory, from applewood,
  16. from cobs smoldering in their harvest crib.
  17. Smoke from a roadside roadhouse flare.
  18. Smoke smuggled stateside by mouth.
  19. Smoked later in the rind, Szalonna-style,
  20. fat dripping into mitts of bread and radish.
  21. Like fingerprints, the catalogue promises.
  22. Each one different. They come to be confit
  23. in the cast-iron, slow and low, or microwaved
  24. to a crisp in their swaddle of paper towels.
  25. They come for company of greens and eggs.
  26. They come to our kitchen, singing with ghosts.
  27. and hunger is the palm that gathers us all.

© Sandra Beasley.

About the Poet:

Sandra Beasley, United States, (b. 1980) is a poet and non-fiction writer. Beasley is the author of Made to Explode, Count the Waves; I Was the Jukebox, winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize; and Theories of Falling, winner of the New Issues Poetry Prize. She edited the anthology Vinegar and Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. She is also the author of Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life, a memoir of living with disability and a cultural history of food allergies. Her prose has appeared in such venues as the New York Times, The Washington Post, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Oxford American and others.

Honors for Beasley’s work include a 2015 National Endowment for the Arts Artist Fellowship; the Munster Literature Centre’s John Montague International Poetry Fellowship; the Center for Book Arts Chapbook Prize; distinguished writer residencies at Wichita State University, Cornell College, Lenoir-Rhyne University, and the University of Mississippi; and five DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Artist Fellowships. Beasley periodically teaches at American University, where she received her MFA in 2004.

Beasley also serves on faculty for community institutions such as 24 Pearl Street, The Writer’s Center, and Politics and Prose. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, visual artist Champneys Taylor. [DES-01/22]

Additional information:

  • Made to Explode (2021) – Sandra Beasley latest book of poetry

    “A rare and vibrant exploration of whiteness and complicity when it comes to America’s history and traditions, Made to Explode is a courageous interrogation of self, culture, and how we are made. Both unflinching and tender, Beasley’s smart and radiant poems glow with a historian’s exactitude and a poet’s lyrical heart.” ~ Ada Limón

  • Sandra Beasley‘s professional web site
  • Sandra Beasley’s personal blog, “Chicks Dig Poetry”…occasional postcards from Washington, D.C.