Combat Tango

Introducing the poetry of Brooke Sahni

Editor’s Note: Poems by Brooke Sahni don’t often match the Hegelian triad of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. Instead, two opposites square off on a page, where they wrestle — or is it wildly embrace? — before getting sent by a referee back to their sweaty corners. In another realm — dance — this kind of interaction is called “combat tango.” Both partners toss the other around, each fighting to keep their balance.

In poetry, this same exciting style can thrill anyone juiced by tension — and surprise. In fact, many of Sahni’s poems turn on a startling enjambment, as in “The Sensuous Woman by J”: “A woman gets eaten / out by a tiger and the unnamed author” reveals that any girl “might want to be / tiger and / woman—satiated in either form.”

What’s wrong, after all, with a toothy fullness? — asks the poem, evoking at once The Book of J (for those intrigued by the idea of a woman writing parts of the Jewish Bible) and the Indian Kama Sutra (for those curious about cat-like sexual acts).

Nothing, is the answer. Plus, Sahni’s pairing of the two references feels unforced, perhaps because it draws on her own mixed background. (Her mother is Jewish, and her father, Sikh.) In her poetry, both the Biblical Eve and the digital app My Guru get pride of place.

But so, too, does the tension between opposites: the intertwined and the atomized. “What devotion,” thinks one of her speakers, a traveler suspended between two airport gates, of a sacred text’s lonely journey “from belief, to scribe, to pages, to printing press, / to silken robes, the body.”

Some duos can never fully connect — or quit fighting the urge to try. It’s a paradox we often support, especially in lovers, and one that Sahni deftly captures in her writing.

— Susan Comninos, Poetry Editor

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THE BODY OF THE GURU
 

A bustling airport, my aunt pulls up an app
called myguru, tells me everyday she reads

ten pages of scripture—every line is Hindi
Punjabi and English she says of the words aglow

behind the glass, then confesses her wish
that my grandmother were still here to teach me.

What steadiness it takes to write the word of god,
to imbue spirit into paper, an app. I recall

the book The Making of a Sikh Scripture where the author
uses language like clothe this revelation and the body of the guru.

The big question: Many ask, if the children
do not inherit the tradition, then how will it

survive in foreign lands? What devotion—
from belief, to scribe, to pages, to printing press,

to silken robes, the body. I once asked
my father how many letters are in the Hindi alphabet

and he said I should look it up.
Didn’t you go to school? I joked. I just

can’t remember. Over the PA a voice announces
our departures so my aunt and I head out
our separate gates.


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THE SENSUOUS WOMAN BY J


A woman   gets eaten


                          out    by a tiger   and the unnamed    author assures


the readers      that this fantasy     is perfectly     natural—


             natural      that a woman   might want to    be

tiger and

woman—satiated in either form.     We’d found the book in my mother’s old

high school dresser        amongst

yearbooks    photos     diaries    locks of my baby hair.


               A holy thing    we pass it. Read rape     read pleasure     read outdated language

— be the woman every man yearns to make love to—the woman you yearn to be.

               It’s summer

so many things are calling us    into and out of    ourselves    so we close it   gently

   place it

back in its darkness   position it


so it looks untouched.


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NOTES ON MIDRASH


1.

Sex ed. came early, arrived in the form of having us gather in a circle and ask. But first the teacher held up diagrams, unholy-ed the body with mechanics—ovum, tubes, minora and majora. I don’t remember any mention of pleasure, and I didn’t ask—(the first time I touched myself the elm flowered and I never considered the two blooms as an answer. The question was is pleasure a sacred act?) The teacher held up a tampon, passed it like besamim, asked us if we knew what it was and when Arielle guessed the tampon was a candle the room lit with laughter, I joined, knowing what it was, feeling somehow, the inner ache that awaited me and the teacher said something about the body needing to ready itself in order to receive, so I considered my fingers and how far I would need to root until something broke.

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ADAM 


Because he’s a Scorpio, he’s brought with him some strange, alluring gift. A
bone, a feather, something slight and ephemeral – a gentle reminder that he
could be gone, too. If Adam were a Scorpio, then maybe he would have 
been born in late October, my favorite season, the dark season – fall. At 
night, with Eve, he would have talked abstractly about the world because 
back then everything was magic – the lack of language, luminous, lack of 
science to name even the sunset or the smell of fruit ripening on the tree. I 
like to imagine how beautiful it all would have been. And terrifying, like the 
Scorpio, all night and darkness, mystery and abandon. Unabashed about 
nakedness, first kiss without a word for swoon – all feeling and flesh. Back 
when everything was so close without having the word perigee. And the 
moon was so close. Eve, sticking out her tongue, could almost taste it, and 
Adam knew she was beautiful. He felt more beautiful in her presence. And 
he forgot about god, though god was so close, and believed he had created 
the world. He whispered to Eve imperfect explanations: this is how, and this 
is why.


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Brooke Sahni is the author of four books of poems, most recently In This Distance. Her debut collection, Before I Had the Word (Texas Review Press), won the XJ Kennedy Poetry Prize and her chapbook, Divining (Orison Books), won the Orison Chapbook Prize. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Nimrod, The Cincinnati Review, Boulevard, Verse Daily, 32 Poems, and elsewhere. Her poetry chapbook, Letters, Dreams is forthcoming in fall 2026. A native of Cleveland, Ohio, she lives in the high desert mountains of Arizona. Her poems above — “The Body of the Guru,” “The Sensuous Woman by J,” “Notes on Midrash” (part I) and “Adam” — first appeared in The Missouri Review, The Shore, Tinderbox Poetry Journal and the Alaska Quarterly Review, respectively.

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Five Tiny Delights:

- the smell of creosote rising, after it rains, in the desert;

-drinking a strong coffee at an outdoor café in fall;

-a dog leaning his weight against you;

-sending mail to friends; and

-spending time in a beautifully designed space.

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Five Tiny Jewish Delights:

-matzoh ball soup (with the little Israeli croutons);

-recalling my grandfather’s voice and his pride when he spoke Yiddish (he was fluent!);

-Shabbat as a day to embrace quietude and reflection;

-sharing that “Jewish connection” with strangers; and

-the Hebrew prayers and songs that come back to me even if I haven’t recited them in decades.