Up Late but If You’re Worried


 
 
 
And all my friends pack together ash castles on the beach after

a bonfire           spit for mortar           and the ocean rolls back home           with a knot

 

in its stomach             to pick through the day’s personals           There is such a sunlight     A surgeon in a box

prepares a body for dissection           draws lines shapes colors

 

skin like stained glass           Next to me           in my pew

a fly genuflects and the echo           cathedral wide

 

deafens           only to be drowned by the organ’s groan             a distorted sound like

Wheel of Fortune’s Bankrupt spin               A kid with crossed legs

 

holding his crotch             hands me a basket and I’m hot in the face

with shame, my single dollar           All I want is the morning paper             My blood stuttering

 

in the sunlight         the sky so heady, thinking the world of itself         On my front porch,

one neighbor kid           triages the other neighbor kids

 

after a game of cops and robbers         I will walk back inside without the paper         without my arm

either         and my one good hand going inside           my pocket for an excuse         comes out addled

 
 
 
author-photo-twal
 

Peter Twal is an electrical engineer living in Lafayette, Indiana. His works have appeared (or will soon) in Kenyon Review Online, Ninth Letter Online, Quarterly West, cream city review, The Journal, Devil’s Lake, RHINO, Booth, Yemassee, New Delta Review, Forklift, Ohio, DIAGRAM, Bat City Review, New Orleans Review, and elsewhere. Peter earned his MFA from the University of Notre Dame, and you can find more of his work at petertwal.com.