Response/Ability

By Schyler Butler

Share the photo of Keisha with tire marks cascading her back.
Remember the protest last night, the hungry eyes.
Ask the masses where were you.
Ask them taste blood in exchange for God.
After the ashes settle on the campus rooftops
and the downtown glass is swept,
pay for Speedway Marlboro’s.
Listen to birds chirp and avoid the eyes
of every child still young enough to grow.

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, her work appears and is forthcoming in Duende, Superstition Review, Obsidian, Heavy Feather Review’s #NoMorePresidents, Kissing Dynamite, and elsewhere, sometimes under the pseudonym “Iyana Sky.” She lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash.