Broken Sonnet for LA Jealousy
—considering Niki Herd
The moon tips its sombrero of clouds
towards North Hollywood. The streets, perfumed
with a bar sign’s cyan light. Funny what
absence does for cataloging, what
leaving can do for remembrance. The palm
trees here talk shit about my old block.
The sunset, pink-tongued and yellow-toothed—
/
Thief. Chicago nights, dark as the inside
of a shirt. Then different darks swallowing
one another like Russian dolls—the dark
street with the dark house, the dark girl
with the dark room. The clouds a dark stain
on a darker garment. The quiet
so loud it cupped my ears with its hands—
Dr. Taylor Byas, Ph.D. is a Black Chicago native currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she is a Features Editor for The Rumpus, an Editorial Advisor for Jackleg Press, a member of the Beloit Poetry Journal Editorial Board, and a Poetry Editor-at-Large for Texas Review Press. Her debut full-length, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times from Soft Skull Press, won the 2023 Maya Angelou Book Award, the 2023 Chicago Review of Books Award in Poetry, and the 2024 Ohioana Book Award in Poetry. Her second full-length, Resting Bitch Face (2025), was a September 2025 pick for Roxane Gay’s Audacious Book Club, and was named a Top 5 Poetry Collection of the Year by Electric Literature. She is also a coeditor of The Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol X: Alabama, from Texas Review Press, and Poemhood: Our Black Revival, a YA anthology from HarperCollins.
