Bravata
- Bravata
Mama, push up your cleavage till they burstabove that size-too-small V-neck. Tuckyour stomach fat down the waistband of yourhigh-rise skinnies. Turn around and watchyour behind pop the glass of your cheap floorlength. Don't matter you thirty-five with threekids; don't matter us girls are watching.Mama, you got a body: demand the world see.Ain't that the least it can do after giving youphilanderer after philanderer, their lips hopesaturated then licked dry after tasting beneathyour miniskirt, beneath the plunging lace anddeep cuts of your sight-curdling bravata, youwearing the same stilettos your mama wore.Mama, don't cry now; us children are watching. [End Page 68]
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 African American Review, Writers Resist, Duende, Superstition Review, Obsidian, Heavy Feather Review's #NoMorePresidents, Kissing Dynamite, and elsewhere, sometimes under the pseudonym "Iyana Sky." Currently, she lives in Columbus, OH.
