Schyler Butler
Where It May
He plucks a flower outside the library.
He doesn’t know what kind it is,
just that it’s yellow like sunlight, a dark
middle like his iris, exuding the same
warmth. Where he’s from no one taught
him the names of the plants that grow
natural on this terrain his ancestors probably
called home long before invaders came.
He doesn’t know he, too, can claim this honeyed
dirt, that it flows in his gold-spun blood. Where
he’s from, people lie. No one knows why
people fear skin like his or so they say. No one
knows anything but shame flowering where it may.
He doesn’t know what kind it is,
just that it’s yellow like sunlight, a dark
middle like his iris, exuding the same
warmth. Where he’s from no one taught
him the names of the plants that grow
natural on this terrain his ancestors probably
called home long before invaders came.
He doesn’t know he, too, can claim this honeyed
dirt, that it flows in his gold-spun blood. Where
he’s from, people lie. No one knows why
people fear skin like his or so they say. No one
knows anything but shame flowering where it may.
Biography
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Schyler Butler (she/her) 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, her work appears in Duende, Superstition Review, Obsidian, Heavy Feather Review's #NoMorePresidents, and elsewhere, sometimes under the pseudonym "Iyana Sky." Currently, she lives in Columbus, Ohio.
Instagram: @whistle_the_blues |
