Eyes in the Backs of Our Hands

We wear them like opals that blink,
like atlas moths, but they stare always.

We call the eyes blue—impatient water—
but really, this is the color of kindness

passing us in the night unseen.
Some things are worse than loss:

how radio static blares from our open
mouths, those nights we never came

though we pressed and pressed our thighs.
Loss is always its own favorite sister.

Allison Blevins is a queer disabled writer. She is the author of the collections Handbook for the Newly Disabled, A Lyric Memoir (BlazeVox, 2022) and Slowly/Suddenly (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2021). Cataloguing Pain (YesYes Books, 2022), a finalist for the Pamet River Prize, is forthcoming. She is also the author of the chapbooks Chorus for the Kill (Seven Kitchens Press, 2022), Susurration (Blue Lyra Press, 2019), Letters to Joan (Lithic Press, 2019), and A Season for Speaking (Seven Kitchens Press, 2019), part of the Robin Becker Series. Allison is the Founder and Director of Small Harbor Publishing and the Executive Editor at the museum of americana. She lives in Missouri with her partner and three children where she co-organizes the Downtown Poetry reading series. For more information visit allisonblevins.com.

A former John and Renee Grisham fellow, Joshua Davis holds an MFA from the University of Mississippi, an MFA from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine, and an MA from Pittsburg State University. He is the author of the chapbook Chorus for the Kill (Seven Kitchens Press, 2022). Recent poems have appeared in The Poetry Distillery, the museum of americana, and The Midwest Quarterly. He is a doctoral candidate in American Literature at Ohio University, and he lives near Tampa.