Allison Blevins | A Season for Speaking

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A Season for Speaking: poems by Allison Blevins. Number 20 in the Robin Becker Chapbook Series, selected by editors Crystal Boson and Ron Mohring.

Cover image: Marsha Boston, “By a Thread”
http://www.marshaboston.com 

Publication:  February 11, 2019 [100 copies]
ISBN: 978-1-949333-47-3
21 pages
$ 9.00

Blevins photo

 

 

 

 

 

 

Allison Blevins received her MFA at Queens University of Charlotte and is a Lecturer for the Women’s Studies Program at Pittsburg State University and the Department of English and Philosophy at Missouri Southern State University. In 2017, she was named a finalist for the Cowles Poetry Book Prize, the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, and the Moon City Poetry Award. Her work has appeared in such journals as Mid-American Review, the minnesota review, Nimrod International Journal, Sinister Wisdom, and Josephine Quarterly. She lives in Missouri with her wife and three children.

Early Menopause

All birds forget how to fly. Crows and blackbirds 
walk through parks and cul-de-sacs on invisible stilts.

All schools chain their doors. Women and girls pray wordlessly
in supermarkets between plastic forks and bottled water.

All breezes stop whistling through the stray hairs
of teenagers’ necks. Wind purses lips and blows.

All is silent as a man in a black bowler hat. I watch my children
play at the park. My son shoots a stranger’s son with his finger.

A girl drags a small stuffed dog behind her on a leash.
The shot hits his temple. The bang is metal piercing flesh,

a pin striking the casing of a round; the noise
bounces off the spiral slide, picnic tables, grills

enshrined in concrete. I can’t explain why the skin folding
between my legs is tight like a scar, why men now brush

against me in crowds as if I am a shudder. I can’t explain
how it feels in the bowels, on the teeth, on the still smooth bits

of skin in the pits of my elbow–this is where it stings
and hums when you suddenly disappear.

  • Purchase your copy here. Thanks so much for supporting this poet and the Robin Becker Chapbook Series!