A Man Makes a Stoplight His Own Red-Light District
by Taylor Byas
You’d say he rolled to a stop, but that ain’t what is was.
A sidle up beside, a pimp-slide only that old Cadillac
could do, with rims still spinning like a record you
fuck to. Girl, don’t look. He’s loud on purpose, got
the whole block’s belly rumbling with everything
but hunger, that ear-itch bass like a hand around
your chin, pulling—look here. In the frame of your car
window, you are a portrait to hang over his head-
board, a brown Mona Lisa smirking as he touches
himself in the quarter-flash of moonlight, a purchase
he ain’t got the green for. In this warm summer night,
a refrain of propositions. You got a man? We can’t
be friends? Can I take you out sometime? The watch and rings
on his hands cutlery to carve you out that dress clean
as Saturday mornings. You wear a corset of helplessness
and tighten its laces. Can’t breathe, but girl you look good
enough to follow home. You watch the eyes of his
headlights tail you, unblinking. You don’t let air into
your lungs until he finally slinks down a side-street, decides
it is enough to seal his prayers tonight with your name.
Taylor Byas is a Black Chicago native currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio. She is now a second year PhD student and Yates scholar at the University of Cincinnati, and an Assistant Features Editor for The Rumpus. She was the 1st place winner of both the Poetry Super Highway and the Frontier Poetry Award for New Poets Contests. Her chapbook, BLOODWARM, is forthcoming from Variant Lit in the summer of 2021. Her work appears or is forthcoming in New Ohio Review, Borderlands Texas Poetry Review, Glass, Iron Horse Literary Review, Hobart, Frontier Poetry, SWWIM, TriQuarterly, and others.