I Don’t Fear Death
But what I’m really picturing
is Omaha: field after fieldof sorghum crisp to my touch
and one house on a high hill,sheets on the line. You tell me
everything ceases, that evenour fingernails give up, but
what I really believe is thatwe keep growing: infinite corn,
husk yielding to green husk.I look back on the miles
connecting me to Earth, think
I’d have never worn those shoes.
I slip them off like anythingborrowed. The clouds are thin
and yellow, smelling offireworks and salt. In Omaha,
the town votes me Queen ofEverything. You are the slow
dance, the last ring of smoke:to be held tight, and then only
this colder air between us.
Sandra Beasley
won the 2007 New Issues Poetry Prize for her book
Theories of Falling, selected by Marie Howe. Her poems have also been featured on
Verse Daily and in the 2005
Best New Poets. Awards include the 2006 Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize from
Passages North and fellowships to Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the Millay Colony. She lives in Washington, DC, where she received her MFA from American University and serves on the editorial staff of
The American Scholar. (4/2008)
AGNI Online: I Don't Fear Death by Sandra Beasley