Allison Blevins

I Imagine a Cage When I Think of You

—after William Butler Yeats

Lion, hen, child, moon. Would you feed me
if I lost my legs? Imagine a woman with long curls,

she comes to take my legs each morning, grinds femur, tibia,
patella to dust, and my powdered bones float like cotton

into the ruins of a house like soft hail. I can’t explain
the difference between not wanting to live

and wanting to die, but it waited in the beige moths
that covered my mouth, nested in my hair.

It lives for everyone between birth and breath.
After all, a terrible beauty is born everyday.

In every room, I held your face, licked the soft
behind your ears, but you never knew.

I can’t say you were the love of my life. Silly.
Meaningless words. I write it out in verse. 

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Allison Blevins (she/her) is the queer disabled author of six chapbooks and four collections. Winner of the 2024 Barthelme Prize, the 2023 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award and the 2022 Laux/Millar Poetry Prize, Allison serves as the Publisher of Small Harbor Publishing. allisonblevins.com