I Was the Jukebox

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 citationfrom “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 salamandershimmying through the kelp in search of shore,and under his fingers the notes slid loosefrom my belly in a long jellyrope of eggsthat took root in the mud.