Laura Lauth: For the Boy I Saw

no older than six,
who watched me watch him

get his beating

in the empty parking lot
of the Beaufort ABC

under a buckshot moon

one night in July,
so hot and high and open,

it’d make you cry

if you were that kind,
but he didn’t, and I didn’t

do anything while

the fist fell fast and time
touched everything twice.