Celibacy's Ending

Neon taverns alight
the scuttling beach.

Sand curls around
our bottle of all-right
wine like suppliant fingers.

A star dies.

I say, "The waves lap
lovingly, sweet sanguine
sissy sauce," because I can

bear this no longer,
this not unbuttoning you.


Matthew Byrne's poetry has appeared in The Best American Poetry 2007, The Antioch Review, Poet Lore, POOL, and some other journals. He received a MFA in poetry from the University of Montana, where he served as the head poetry editor of CutBank for one year. He now works at an insurance agency in Chicago.