by Allison Wilkins
Once she was owl eyes,
sharp at night, staring
straight ahead, searching
for prey. But she was not
the owl head rotating
almost upside down

or talons, tightly wrapped
around snake scales.
She had no feathers, no

flight. She could blink
and process light. Register
the memory of everything

around her – guide the brain
through woods.
She was the eye—wide

open, eerie yellow.
Witness with no means
to cry out in the dark.

Allison Wilkins is a graduate of the University of Nevada Las Vegas International MFA program. Her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming with STILL, Broken Bridge Review, The Georgetown Review, Tiger’s Eye, Platte Valley Review and others. Her article “Through the Beautiful Red: The Use of the Color Red as the Triple-Goddess in Sylvia Plath’s Ariel,” was published with Plath Profiles (August 2010). She currently lives in Virginia with her husband and dogs. She is an Assistant Professor of English and Associate Editor of the James Dickey Review at Lynchburg College.