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Home / Issue 37 / The Chapel

The Chapel

By

Oswaldo Vargas

A man holds the small back of a woman

and I swirl the coins in my pocket

 

I need 50 cents to turn the lever,

grind the cosmic clock backward

 

to when I was on time for our blooming

and I wore something so big

 

and so blue that the cops on bikes paused

to see

 

I was in the park with you, arms raised

in the name of a summer that saw so much

 

We cried for a corner of a bar

where our chapel could fit

 

Raised in front of strangers,

plank by plank

 

until there’s a dome looming low

in the background of every picture we took.

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