By Taylor Byas

Featured Art: Iterations by Brooke Ripley

My father talked about me in hushed tones
on the phone. He said I understood him.

       On the phone, he said I understood him
       when he was drunk, when no one else bothered.

When he was drunk, when no one else bothered
to listen to him, he blew up my phone

       to listen. To him, he blew up my phone
       because I owed him this therapy.

Because I owed him this, therapy
was complicated. My shame, the blame I took

        was complicated. My shame, the blame I took—
        old cycles I repeated. The new men like

old cycles I repeated. The new men, like
my father, talked about me in hushed tones.

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Dr. Taylor Byas, Ph.D. (she/her) is a Black Chicago native currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio. She is the 1st place winner of the 2020 Poetry Super Highway, 2020 Frontier Poetry Award for New Poets Contests, and the 2021 Adrienne Rich Poetry Prize, and a 2023-24 National Book Critics Circle Emerging Fellow. She is the author of two chapbooks, and the debut full-length I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times from Soft Skull Press.