ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Schyler Butler received her BA in English from the University of North Texas. Currently, she lives in Columbus, OH. Her work appears and is forthcoming in Duende, Superstition Review, Obsidian, Glint Literary Journal, Matter, and elsewhere, sometimes under the pseudonym “Iyana Sky”.
Bust Yoke
Someone wants to say it, wants to milk
the proof from my veins, moisturize
my dark eyes with it ‘til it explodes
from my skin. Look at how they dance
within my aura, how they make language from
my mother’s rape with spit that slithers
off their wagging tongues, these people
who once claimed to have discovered what
I knew all along. They are bold.
Every pronouncement that they don’t mean
me when they speak of any other
is another instance where they know
I won’t look close enough to see their whetted
teeth tracing ovals around my throat,
four centuries not long enough for me to grow up.
Most, if not all, black people have stories of instances where someone called them the n-word. Those who look like me — the mixed, the yellow bone, the biracial, the light skinned, the whatever — I suspect, have stories of instances where someone nonblack called someone black the n-word; that nonblack person then explains that we do not count. And their friend, we remain.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
