The Autumn of Her Discontent

Abstract

The Autumn of Her Discontent Jessica Goodfellow (bio) The Japanese maple has lefther red-handed prints all over town—guilty of fall and of falling. Even Eve in her fig leaveswas not arrayed as one of these—as fallen woman, lady in red with each painted finger as pointedas a scarlet letter A. Everyone'salways looking for the luminous, the luminol, the killing and the kindling,the exit wound. You knew from earliestspring when you first tried to quarantine your valentine that this was boundto happen: bound, as in inevitable; boundas in tied, as in trapped; bound as in leaping wild across a field like a redtaileddeer. Dear, it's autumn, and she'ssetting out, loosed from the domestic, from the tree, painting the town red,a loose woman in the wind and wavingfor the moment to gravity good-bye. [End Page 77] Jessica Goodfellow Jessica Goodfellow's books are Whiteout (University of Alaska Press, 2017), Mendeleev's Mandala (Mayapple Press, 2015), and The Insomniac's Weather Report (Isobar Press, 2014). Her work has appeared in Best New Poets, Verse Daily, The Writer's Almanac, and Motionpoems. Former Writer-in-Residence at Denali National Park and Preserve and winner of the Chad Walsh Poetry Prize from the Beloit Poetry Journal, she's recently had poems in the Threepenny Review, The Southern Review, and Best American Poetry 2018. Copyright © 2020 Emerson College