Three Poems by Allison Benis White

The Track

Of course it is the absence
that is so beautiful.

Human or animal, the snow
will fall and cover her
tracks.

Maybe each word
is a footprint filling up
with snow.

I was here, meaning
I am disappearing.

The Shades

At first glance, the trunk
in the river looks like a body
floating face down, naked.

After you died, I saw
you everywhere, which is not
uncommon. Several times a day,
I’d say to myself, Her eyes
(skin, hands) like yours.

I’d say to myself, But not you,
until everyone became more
and more not you, until you were
no one, nowhere—meaning
everyone, everywhere.

The Hunted

The wolf is not real anymore.

God is not real.

Take my hand, the song goes,
and walk with me.

No, to be alone
is better, to love the world
but not someone.

Better to say
to oneself, Walk
with me.

Better to be
two-headed, to ask
and reply, to die
when she dies.

Allison Benis White is the author of Please Bury Me in This (2017) and Small Porcelain Head, selected by Claudia Rankine for the Levis Prize. Her first book, Self-Portrait with Crayon, received the Cleveland State University Poetry Center Book Prize. She teaches at the University of California, Riverside.