Prayer for a Prisoner
by Joseph Byrd
With thanks to Kierkegaard
There is simply a lot of swallowing.
There are simply a lot of guns stuck in faces, and
the sushi lady is simply terrified, being held up, pointed at,
the gunman’s Adam’s apple in rigorous parlay, a remorsed code ticking in
dips and shudders like a dreaded
Dow Jones, like the prison population which will soon
demand his dividends.
O Thou who art unchangeable
Whom nothing changes
what there is to swallow is here, as you showed, as you know,
the same violent vinegar, sponging away nothing, stuck in our faces,
and since
longing is Thy gift
may he, your dear Dragon Roll, swallow himself,
and may his inward tongue of flame become a
crowned knot of fire
taming this wasabi dance of demon and desire
so that when the
longing lays hold of [any of] us
we might learn to
make no meal of murder
(save the death of that which turns the sheep into the herder).
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.
