by Joseph Byrd
There was something about
numbered buttons
and there was something in the
oven. We were
together, but in that
cornstalk way where what
sticks out is
separate and seeded.
I wanted to
push toward the
edge of your
something, wanted to
unbutton the number of
days together without a
recipe, amazed how
corn can be made to
obey beyond humility. There was
something about the way you
forsook my husk. And though
long ago I should have said
shuck you, it was
I who wanted to do that. It was
I who wished to be up before
being buttered. And there was
something about the way your
eyes popped when I
held your breath for you.
One of our buttons says
Self-Clean. What would
pushing something like that
mean, I asked you, just as our
time ran out.
About the Poet:
Joseph Byrd’s work has appeared in Fatal Flaw, South Florida Poetry Journal, DIAGRAM, with forthcoming work in WAXING & WANING, Clackamas Literary Review, Many Nice Donkeys, and Novus Literary Arts. He’s a 2023 Pushcart Prize nominee, 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.
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