By Joseph Byrd
He cradled the injera in his
right hand, a brass lotus stud in his
left ear, silver I Ching coin in his
right, and a mouth that spoke in
American motifs, but slender and
sliding from where there are
mountains that break what is
popular into pieces, where the
tango was his
currency. He spoke of
plants, their medicines. And I knew he
wanted something to be
settled before the
restauranteur neared with a
chipped soufflé cup of
taupe powder, warning us:
“This is powerful.”
I laugh now at how my
mouth still burns to ask
what should I have done when my
first-date friend leaned to
cup some lamb from our plate, asking with his
eyes if I could
sacrifice myself to the
heat of who he was?
What would have happened had I said
nothing?
Joseph Byrd’s work has appeared in Fatal Flaw, South Florida Poetry Journal, DIAGRAM, and forthcoming work in WAXING & WANING. He’s a 2022 Pushcart Award nominee, and was in the 2021 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.
Hot Pot Magazine 