Pareidolia

            After Joan Mitchell’s Sunflower II, 1969

The scuttle a crab makes. The beading liquid a body

in love makes, a body shaped by movement,

concrete as dirt, a body pulled ever faster. The pitter

a foot makes. The burning a body in love makes,

a body pained by swelling like sound is sometimes silence,

like an empty bowl, an unclasped hand, a bale uncoiled

all sometimes sound like the drone of a tire traveling.

            I don’t know how it is to crook my elbow

            around a woman’s neck on the street, pull her close,

            taste what is mine in the back of my throat.

            I don’t know how to own another person.

            I don’t know how to own another person.

            When I fuck, my back is pressed

            to the desk, to the mattress, to the floor.

Allison Blevins received her MFA at Queens University of Charlotte. She has been 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, and Nimrod International Journal. Her chapbook, A Season for Speaking, is forthcoming from Seven Kitchens Press this fall. She lives in Missouri with her wife and three children.