The Moral Kicks In

By Peter Twal

After the first course, your corsage         flatlines into beautiful convulsions          It sprouts wings, thorns, claws
its way up your arm to swallow you goosebump          by goosebump          There is a moment when resurrection
devours the most devout heart          Deep blue           the ink pen veins blow up behind my eyes        Patron saint of stifling
anger on the rocks        Patron saint of politely            melting into this tomato        soup a spoonful at a time
& we speak        in fortune cookie all night               The next dish, a ventilator       An IV        dripping into something 
already dead       I order two specials            Make the pain remind you of the one who signed your tiny 
gashes today    A struggling creek, your tongue
wriggles out from the baby's         breath to ask        Were we ever anything
more than    echolocation    Patron saint of the meteor that falls from the sky:                          forgiven, eventually, easily

Copyright Credit: Peter Twal, "The Moral Kicks In" from Our Earliest Tattoos, originally published in Gulf Coast (Summer/Fall 2017). Copyright © 2017, 2018 by Peter Twal. Reprinted by permission of University of Arkansas Press.