Peter Twal: If I Could See All My Friends Tonight
And you, saying the most disposable things at the little Italian café
You ordering your dinner like cigarette burn this, motion sickness that
I begin with a preprogrammed joke what’s the difference between God
and the Mars Rover Rumor has it in front of a mirror Death deals
with dandruff like the rest of us: avoiding all black
Death’s existential enlightenment— shedding skin in the shower
All my friends say some invisible man’s been murdering
residents of our apartment complex, but in the end, you point out
it was just a man in an invisibility suit and I feel relieved Your mouth
making movie set sounds I make a mental note: pick up food for pet turtle
soup on Wednesday Outside, later than ever, there was even a sky but no
explanation
for your skin smearing when I helped you into the cab You, so filmy Your
hair
too grainy to tell You, so black and white and deep
in my transistors it hurts
PETER TWAL is a first-generation Jordanian-American and holds down a day job as an electrical
engineer. His poetry has appeared in or will soon in Kenyon Review Online,
Ninth Letter Online, cream city review, The Journal,
RHINO, Yemassee, New Delta Review, Bat City Review,
DIAGRAM, New Orleans Review, Forklift, Ohio, and elsewhere.
A recipient of the Samuel and Mary Anne Hazo Poetry Award, Peter earned his MFA from the
University of Notre Dame, and currently, he is at work on a manuscript of sonnets titled
Like a Sales Force into the Night. More from this
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