In a State of Intoxication Sandra Beasley The navel corresponds to the omphalos. A corner corresponds to a right angle. A spoon corresponds against its bowl— curve to curve, an efficiency of emptying. When the ax hits an inconvenient sapling, the wound corresponds to the strike. When I say I wish to correspond with you, what I mean is I want to bite your tongue across these many miles. I was careful. Careful did not serve me. Can the foot correspond with a tightrope? One always hoping to outdo the other. For a year, a black speck has floated on my right eye. It corresponds to nothing. It is and is. It reminds me that what I see does not correspond to what I touch. Not anymore. Sandra Beasley carries a flask, likes to dance, and perpetually has somewhere she should have been twenty minutes ago. She is the author of I Was the Jukebox (W.W. Norton, 2010), winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Theories of Falling (New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2008). Her most recent book is Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life (Crown, 2011), a memoir and cultural history of food allergy. (Luckily she is not allergic to scotch.) She lives in Washington, DC. “ ‘In a State of Intoxication’ ” appears in our Winter 2013 issue.