Matthew Byrne

I commissioned my artist friend to paint
a starlit evening on our nursery ceiling.
He struggled at first, pacing the room,
obsessively scaling his ladder. The job
was beneath him, but he needed the money.
Something had to be done, so I burned
his obscure punk cds into my computer,
so he could listen to his music randomly
shuffling and without interruption.
He finished the very next day, but instead
of the tranquil twilight I envisioned, I got
a maelstrom brewing around a moon more
menacing than an axe-wielding lunatic.
I paid up, made the nursery our bedroom,
and my wife and I have never slept better.

MATTHEW BYRNE‘s poems have been published in known and obscure journals. He won the Sow’s Ear Chapbook award in 2013 and was included in the Heather-McHugh-edited 2007 Best American Poetry anthology. He sells insurance for a living in Chicago, Illinois.