Child of Divorce at a Wedding by Tim Wenzell

A four year old boy in a white shirt and red clip-on tie
stands in a men’s room along the urinal wall
waiting for dad to finish throwing up in the first stall:

He is listening to the sound of seven shots and ten beers
and chicken capon coming up
out of suddenly strange dad,
but he is watching the men along the wall
piss into vertical toilets,
and the boy tries to straighten
his little red tie.

After the dance floor clears,
the music packed away in leather boxes
and the coats on hooks all but gone,
his grandfather will call into the stall,
carry his father away from the last peeing man,
drive the both of them home in his big car---

And the little boy will sleep over
his grandparent’s house
in the room with the dusty crib and the flickering night light,
and wait for Sunday drop-off
at his mother’s high-rise.