I have learned: listen not to the mind first thing in the
morning. Greedy like a basketball shoe for the court, it
scuffs where it should not. I have learned that opening my
6am curtains can turn this thinking inside out like a pair of
gym shorts, learned that few know how one’s insides shift to
one’s outsides with only a look from you at dinner in
Minneapolis. Aggressive love is so strange, you said,
chewing on goat. Pureness, preciousness, these two
vanish with nothing more than an alarm clock, and I
didn’t wake up beside you as I am always awake anyway.
Do you hear the ways I keep fooling myself about this?
Do you remember when I first saw you again, and was
mainly concerned about food? Eight years later, I cannot
see you as anything else. I am constantly apologizing for my
appetites. I am no longer sure where to find that. I have learned
that my kind of courtly love no longer includes lutes, or layups, or
any attempts at timeouts. Something about morning aches. The
important question: what game did we play last night? I am listening.
Maybe we played shirts vs. skins. I know which team I prefer. I know
how to hear where this game is going, even if I long lacked an asterisk
on my typewriter. I get happy, wanting to make note of what is special,*
contrary to your hatred of my saying so. But postcards have been held
in my own hands at some point, and I have learned what it means to
touch you this way. I am growing less ashamed to ring your doorbell,
asking if you will play with me, if you will help me learn how to stop
listening to my mind in the morning. And I will be happy to do anything
you suggest: tea, blood-letting, raucous laughter at the day’s news, going
anywhere with you, even into that narrow, pinching place called love.
*you
Bio: Joseph Byrd’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Punt Volat, Pedestal, South Florida Poetry Journal, DIAGRAM, Clackamas Literary Review, Many Nice Donkeys, and Novus Literary Arts. He’s 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.
Commentary
I love the stark honesty of this piece. No doubt each inference is striking and I beleive resonates with many of us. The similes are apt with 'gym shorts' and 'alarm clock' being most creative ones, in my opinion (wherein the 'alarm clock' is analogous to 'transience'). Emphasis on the asterisk adds an uniqueness to this piece. The ending is a smooth conclusion.