Where the Apple Falls.

Where the Apple Falls by Samiya Bashir, RedBone Press April 2005, $14, ISBN 0-965-66597-6

In her debut collection Where the Apple Falls, Samiya Bashir demands we listen and hear the symphony of stories that "sail on the ochre cushion of these moonlit poems" In "Moon Cycling," she writes:

   Don't come by my door
   Smellin' fresh like that
   Sizzling like summer
   Steak medium rare
   I'll think you are
   My supper

But she opens the door and her words and images grab us and never let go. She challenges ideas of edginess, religion, beauty, sexuality and imagination. Bashir's language is vivid and compelling in lines like "Crooked back bowed into the new black moon." There's remarkable womanness, vulnerability, pain and insight in these lines. Bashir has a unique ability to explore the past while keeping it relevant to the present, as expressed in "Of Saints and Suppers" and particularly in "Gwendoivn's Attic."

Bashir's command of language is evidenced in "The Trouble with This Harvest Time," as she walks an errant line of danger with sassiness and feat:

   he says i like it rough
   and i do i do
   but that's not the point

Then, one stanza later:

   it is true
   i go looking
   for trouble

"To the Moon" is provocative and unpretentious, while the language of "Through Tenement Window" is sparse and elegant. In "Clitigation," Bashir is sexy and sly.

Where the Apple Falls can at times be a difficult read, as many poems are dense and complex. But here is a new and provocative voice comfortable in the skin of her poems, secure in her poetic vision.

Cheryl Boyce Taylor is a New York City-based poet and teaching artist and the author of Night When Moon Follows (Long Shot Productions, April 2000).