The Fall I Lived Like a Spell
A power rose in me, bred of pine and ashes, with an ochred sheen.
It grew its shape on its own. I didn’t will it into being. That was the magic.
It was the fall I felt my blood bloom inside of me. It was a nourishing oil, a potion.
I gained weight and didn’t resent it. When I looked at the trees, I felt made of them.
I bought a book called The Book of Symbols and I thought even more about my dreams.
I collected old objects from the antique stores and listened to famous women talk about eroticism.
There was the Harvest Moon and my mother and her friends howling.
A woman in the group told me her husband thought I was beautiful. It was the fall I felt beautiful—
that oil and how it inked me and I wondered if I would ever feel this way again.
I haven’t.
It was the fall my mother and I lived together and drank spiced beer. I lit black cigarettes
ceremoniously. It was all an example of things arriving when you’re not looking.
There were acorns and the sun was what autumn should always be.
I didn’t want any of it to end and knew it would end.
I found the right song for the season and I listened to it over and over. I bought black tights and
walked the dog to the creek where he entered and stood; I watched his belly darken
and cool. To describe the air and light that September, October, is impossible. I was so happy
I could have left my life, knowing something important had happened. I hovered.
To describe what poetry did to me that season feels sacrilegious. I felt everything on my skin.
Every stroke of light was a spell.
Your attention pulsed against me like a mood ring. Let me be clear—
when you found me, all of this had already started. The apples were already sensuous. The coyotes
were already an incantation. My desire became a tight, dense cluster of pine cones. Maybe by
October it was more akin to the scarlet firethorn. Things burned against me.
That oil turned from gold to red. You called me Broomstick and I smiled, when I should have
cackled, torn through the night away from you.
When you touched me, everything began and ended.
—————
Bounty
You say we have to stop
before we’ve even started.
Before you’ve had the chance to do
all the things you said you wanted to do
to my body. You ended things on the cusp
of summer.
Now, the season flaunts its fullness,
now I can’t take the heat, the flowers. I
don’t want to know anything
of nectar. When we speak again,
you tell me about your garden.
That it’s producing, that you’ve been roasting
tomatoes for a sauce you’ll ladle over
the eggplant you grew. There are bell peppers
and jars of fig jam. So many figs, you say,
you can share them with the birds, squirrels
and yellowjackets and there’s still enough.
Then there’s even more: tomorrow your mom
is coming for dinner, your mom who you spoke about
in great detail back when you said you needed me.
Tomorrow, you will make a meal out of lady peas, fried okra
and cornbread dipped in buttermilk—
you tell me all of this and you don’t think
you’re talking about desire.
You say it all casually. Don’t you know
how much I miss you? That before summer there was spring
ripe with the promise of you? I don’t want to hear
about your garden or your hands
turning figs into jam. That when I say, how lovely,
how beautiful, what I mean is, I want you to come find me,
take me to the nearest garden
and unearth me.
—————
Brooke Sahni is the author of Before I Had the Word (Texas Review Press, 2021), which won the X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize selected by Maggie Smith. She is also the author of Divining (Orison Books, 2020), which won the Orison Chapbook Prize. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in journals such as Alaska Quarterly, The Cincinnati Review, Boulevard, Verse Daily, 32 Poems and elsewhere. Her new collection of poetry, In This Distance, is forthcoming this fall. She lives in the high desert mountains of Arizona.