Alison Townsend Biography

Sleepwalking.
That's what you think
when you see the girl walking
alone at West Towne Mall; she's
...

Because the body is a map
and because the map I know best
is the one of this country, I pluck her
from the pages of the book of myth
...

It happens in the dark.
If it was light would she be able to stand it?
Her father's bed a cave she crawls into
when she wakes, forgetting, then remembering,
...

He wanted to paint me.
Though I was married to his best friend,
I felt his eyes follow me everywhere,
his gaze like a sable brush on my skin.
...

No matter what you do, she's a girl looking both ways
isn't she? When you really think about it. When you stand
in her shoes, whether they are the open-toed, gold sandals
of Greek myth, platform wedges and Indian water-buffalo
...