{"id":11508,"date":"2021-01-10T20:45:43","date_gmt":"2021-01-10T20:45:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=11508"},"modified":"2021-01-11T01:48:56","modified_gmt":"2021-01-11T01:48:56","slug":"two-poems-schyler-butler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=11508","title":{"rendered":"TWO POEMS – Schyler Butler"},"content":{"rendered":"

LISTEN<\/strong>
\n 
\nFirst he’ll gift me nights tied
\nwith cheap Merlot ribbons
\nfrayed beneath crescent moons
\nthen introduce me to the art
\nof whistling, instruct me
\nto pucker less before blowing,
\nmy lips dry bolti unable
\nto remember water, the song
\nthat erupts a lost cantata
\nonly he can access.
\n 
\nWhen he plucks the sun
\ninto bloom between latescent
\nfingers, my mouth remains
\nunable to match the euphoria
\ndancing on each temple.
\n 
\nSo when he stayed outside
\nmy front door for five hours
\nafter the first time his fist
\ntwirled against the backdrop
\nof my brown flesh, whistling
\nlike a jagged chime scraping
\nvinyl hall, I was not surprised,
\nprayed in a locked bathroom
\nfor silence, clasped hands so hard
\nthe blood should’ve burst.
\n <\/p>\n

\n

 
\nTWENTY SOMETHING<\/strong>
\n 
\nRolling down Fry St. on your mountain bike
\nlike a Prime Minister abandoning Parliament,
\nhands loose on the handlebars and a customary
\ncigarette lopped between a grin, you reigned.
\nAll the girls saw; all the middle-aged professors
\nand store owners reminisced. Here you killed
\ntime till your band played their gig at Gillian\u2019s,
\nnever mind it\u2019s Wednesday and an Intro to World Lit
\npaper calls, never mind the text messages
\nMisty sends like hot potatoes missed: on this street,
\nyour long hair blows, your absence breezy blasphemy.
\n 
\n 
\n\"\"Schyler Butler received her BA in English from the University of North Texas. A recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for FY 2020 and a lead poetry editor for Human\/Kind Journal<\/em>, her work appears in and is forthcoming from African American Review, Writers Resist, Duende, Superstition Review, Obsidian, Heavy Feather Review’s #NoMorePresidents, Kissing Dynamite, <\/em>and elsewhere, sometimes under the pseudonym “Iyana Sky.” Currently, she lives in Columbus, OH.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LISTEN   First he’ll gift me nights tied with cheap Merlot ribbons frayed beneath crescent moons then introduce me to the art of whistling, instruct me to pucker less before blowing, my lips dry bolti unable to remember water, the song that erupts a lost cantata only he can access.   When he plucks the [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2938,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[205],"class_list":["post-11508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-art-by-lance-johnson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11508"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11520,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11508\/revisions\/11520"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}