Joseph Byrd
Joseph Byrd is a 2025 Best Small Fictions winner, a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee 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 reviews for The Bear Review and Antiphony. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Exposition Review, The South Carolina Review, Stone Canoe, CutBank, Pedestal, South Florida Poetry Journal, DIAGRAM, Novus Literary Arts, and elsewhere. IG @seppilintu
Son of a cop
I know why no one shot my father at the 7-11 soda fountain.
He drank grouch, but arrested many who thanked him later.
He knew arsenals, adrenalines.
He stored files in some body somewhere. And remembered.
His hells had toddlers under tires.
His heavens: knowing all the names.
Our phone rang lots.
I sleep crap. I learned his graveyard.
Mom would weep, read annotations in Proverbs: for the hearty counsel of a friend.
That was after the shot. Some cops can’t stop themselves. And he, their counselor.
I know what has kept me from coming home.
Dad had situations everywhere.
There are detours called stuck, called stabbing.
There are walkways you don’t walk on.
Are there ways to hate hate? Oh, Justice, show me.
Father may I.
I know what danger can do. I see it simple.
Go gang. Get hunged. Fly into blood, to brain.
He’d race after cars on Halloween because of crime.
He’d taste a gored knuckle, open a stank door.
He’d weep at hope. He knew the fake end of ache.
He said: don’t be me. It was a love.
There are lots of badge-heavy turds out there, he’d say.
And the evening news showed him pulling some dead body with guns and yelling.
I have logged hours on his seas.
I have sailed my daddy’s mind.
It was a swerving car.
It was a knife cutting gristle off.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Image by Pexelspixabay from Pexels
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
© 2025 Iron Oak Editions
Stay Connected to Our Literary Community. Subscribe to Our Newsletter
Listen:
