by Joseph Byrd
Poetry
Stopped talking about things that turned tin-can too quick. Hid my eyeballs in your loving paws. Took a turn around the corner called Undone. Repurposed our former fears over high tea. Got a factory recall on my automatic tensions. Found the button that said hunh-uh. Learned my true middle name and hid it in a graveyard. Told my mama I had no idea. Correctly guessed how many rainbows I’d need to get my luck alive again. Looked into that property on the edge of jiggy. Found my way through all the haunt holes. Realized what cheese can do at the right moment. Untucked my bedclothes. Dug around in somebody else’s basement till I recognized my own dirt. Chucked my gewgaw. Grew only peonies in that little box beneath my brain. Trusted that a single phylactery would do. Opened an account at a bank called This Belongs to Everybody. DM’d somebody who DM’d me first because I’m too damn shy to DM. Found a bottle of art syrup. Knew the magic called moneylessness. Took my trip to that place called Look-See without worrying about nothing. Firsted myself in waking up to wonder, and not freaking out about the dawn again. Told my baby bro that he was a good right reverend. Found a little coincidence called you, too.
Poet, playwright, and composer Joseph Byrd has work that has appeared or is forthcoming in The South Carolina Review, Stone Canoe, CutBank, Vita Poetica, Pedestal Magazine, South Florida Poetry Journal, DIAGRAM, and Novus Literary and Arts Journal. A Facilitator with Shakespeare Behind Bars and a graduate of the Eastman School of Music, he is a Pushcart Prize nominee, was long-listed for the erbacce Prize, and was in the StoryBoard Chicago cohort with Kaveh Akbar. An Associate Artist in Poetry under Joy Harjo at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, he is on the Reading Board for The Plentitudes.