By Keagan Wheat
As a queer Texan, Elisheva Fox’s debut poetry collection, Spellbook for the Sabbath Queen, moved me in recognizable, yet surprising ways. If you have any relation to the area, you will adore the scenery of this book, not only in familiarity (sometimes lacking in poetry) but through the handling of queerness in Texas. The poet draws you into an array of colors, from violets to bluebonnets, from gray-green waters to golden grass. Fox cycles between the vibrancy of the “Texan summer [being] technicolor” and the “melting magic / in the way snow crumbles.” She organically leads you through seasonal changes, which are almost imperceptible without careful attention. This mirrors the subtlety of changing seasons in the Gulf Coast region of Texas. Many examples of stunning concrete imagery amass, working to place you squarely in the region. Even her description of a “glittering slip of highway” somehow presents as specifically Texas within this book.
Within a stanza, Fox pulls and combines iconography from both lesbian history and Texas nature: She “might stay wild, / mane violet and bluebonnet / crowned.” In this, she eliminates the possibility of extricating her particular queer experience from the state. Fox illuminates the queer experience within Texas; it cannot be understood without the context of this setting. She deftly exhibits the queer paradox of East Texas queer communities; we call this place home, yet still find pushback, still danger. I want to give this book to folks outside of Texas (and other states) wondering why queer folks don’t just leave with all the current legislative moves in the state. I found myself dazzled by Fox’s expert integration of queerness in this region. Through the deep connection the collection has to Texas, Fox beautifully encapsulates the multitude of reasons why queer folks remain grounded in the Lone Star State.
I slipped into this book so easily, in part due to Fox’s multifaceted use of intimacy. She makes a beautiful craft move by consistently using the direct address to signal a beloved. Through this move, the reader is always in a close relationship with the writer. You keep being swept into this beautiful tapestry of honesty. This book is easy to love because it loves the reader in a messy way—with longing, anger, and fear. It’s a real capital “R” Romance, a whirlwind of intimacy. Some poems take on a taunting tone by asking the reader to move along to the burning part of a witch trial. Others look to the natural world in wonder, like a description of bats “cupping wind gently” with their wings. Many poems largely take the form of a conversation. Either the speaker or another character—a child, the reader, a beloved—asks or is asked a question. At times, Fox seems to beckon the reader, not only to think with these poems but to really speak with them.
The breadth of Fox’s book, roaming through desire, religion, nature, motherhood, and marriage, invites so much attention. This book could be read several times over with a new focus each time. Even in the very last poem, Fox remains adamant in the intimacy stating, “i have no / depths that i hide from you.” In the ending lines, the poet turns to directly address the reader and how much has been given to the reader through these poems. This collection exemplifies dedication to craft, to reader, to self.
Elisheva Fox is a mother, lawyer, and writer. She braids her late-blooming queerness, Texan sensibilities, motherhood, and faith into words. Fox’s Spellbook for the Sabbath Queen is out now from Belle Point Press. The press features writing from the American Mid-South. With this collection in their catalogue, Belle Point Press is definitely a publisher to keep an eye on for wonderful southern writing. Find Elisheva Fox’s Spellbook for the Sabbath Queen here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/spellbook-for-the-sabbath-queen-elisheva-fox/19842831.
