Allison Joseph lives, writes, and teaches in Carbondale, Illinois, where she’s been on the creative writing faculty of Southern Illinois University since 1994. Her most recent books include My Father’s Kites (Steel Toe Books), Trace Particles (Backbone Press), and Little Epiphanies (Imaginary Friend Press). A 1988 graduate of Kenyon College, this poem was her among her first published poems.
Poetry
Spring 1996
Barbie’s Little Sister
How terrible it would be to be Barbie's little sister, suspended in perpetual pre-adolescencewhile Barbie, hair flying behind her in a tousled blond mane, dashed from adventure to adventure, ready […]
Poetry
Spring 1996
My Father’s Heroes
Not JFK, not MLK, certainly not Ronald Reagan or Edward I. Koch, no, instead my father chose to glory in the feats of Cool Papa Bell, quickest man in the […]
Poetry
Autumn 1991
The Idiot Box
“But can it core an apple?” Norton asks Kramden,another get-rich-quick scheme of theirs gone awry. This time they peddle knives on TV, as if they could ever sell enough to […]
Poetry
Autumn 1991
Dolls
for Charmaine Don’t know where you are now, whether you have children of your own, whether you wake at night with a start, still remembering your handsome,virile father, a man […]
Weekend Reads
Dialogue of the Tenement Widow
From The Kenyon Review, New Series, Winter 1987, Vol. IX, No. 1 Blistered, battered, ransacked, Sold. God, I have heard stories Issue from the mouths of these girls I never […]