SCHYLER BUTLER

By Reality I Mean

Clearly the patron of love lives elsewhere.

Clearly he favors homogeneity of race or else we’d get along.

Clearly this patron rests in beds our synched bodies do not bulge.

Clearly she spies flesh more worthy of your white touch.

Clearly the integration of our colors caters fantasy by design.

Clearly the patron of love seduced trauma to my cause and you do not fix broken.

Clearly the patron of love has yet to meet my kind of karma.

Or maybe this patron tongues the line of what I want and what you really are.

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, her work appears in and is forthcoming from Kissing Dynamite’s PUNK anthology, Hobart,

African American Review, Mom Egg Review, Writers Resist, Duende, Obsidian, and elsewhere, sometimes under the pseudonym “Iyana Sky.” Currently, she lives in Columbus, OH.