Honeymoon
It’s so flat here you can see everything. It’s not romantic. Nobody can slip in or out in secret, and who among us has pumped the last worry through her heart?
Collapsing into shade, I wish for more sons, endless daughters: a higher ratio of my people to other people. Why not want what I want; since we used all the air conditioning it’s become impossible to think things through.
Can you believe your ears? All the electric music in the world has been turned into handbells. I wish I had a cushion for my knees instead of gloves to keep the handbells pure. We can get used to anything. That doesn’t mean we should.
I went to a wedding where everything was outrageous but trying to act modest by including very goofy elements, such as people in bear costumes and gold nuggets descending from the ceiling, only to be jerked back up out of reach when people tried to grab them.
Long ago, a matrimonial family collected a few eggs from each household in the village to contribute to the wedding cake. A pig for the dinner: a gift from a rich great-uncle. Shortly after, there was a period of department store gift services and electro-synth harps for hire.
But now we pick dandelions to make wine, and pluck chickens to make fine the groom’s cloak. He wants large brown wings; he wants wolf pelt for his loins. He wants he wants he wants. There is no end to that.
The bride is someone who has only ever served. No use asking someone who’s once had a true taste of freedom, whose eyes widened and whose pelvis thrust up unbidden. Better she be someone who might never know what she lost.
It is as it ever was. How many centuries have brides been made and used in this way?
How few centuries have let women be girls first, swirling as long as they wanted into their sweetness and sharpening to ripeness, only becoming women once full heavy love was their desire inside and out. Maybe one. Maybe not quite one full century.
Collapsing into shade, I wish for more sons, endless daughters: a higher ratio of my people to other people. Why not want what I want; since we used all the air conditioning it’s become impossible to think things through.
Can you believe your ears? All the electric music in the world has been turned into handbells. I wish I had a cushion for my knees instead of gloves to keep the handbells pure. We can get used to anything. That doesn’t mean we should.
I went to a wedding where everything was outrageous but trying to act modest by including very goofy elements, such as people in bear costumes and gold nuggets descending from the ceiling, only to be jerked back up out of reach when people tried to grab them.
Long ago, a matrimonial family collected a few eggs from each household in the village to contribute to the wedding cake. A pig for the dinner: a gift from a rich great-uncle. Shortly after, there was a period of department store gift services and electro-synth harps for hire.
But now we pick dandelions to make wine, and pluck chickens to make fine the groom’s cloak. He wants large brown wings; he wants wolf pelt for his loins. He wants he wants he wants. There is no end to that.
The bride is someone who has only ever served. No use asking someone who’s once had a true taste of freedom, whose eyes widened and whose pelvis thrust up unbidden. Better she be someone who might never know what she lost.
It is as it ever was. How many centuries have brides been made and used in this way?
How few centuries have let women be girls first, swirling as long as they wanted into their sweetness and sharpening to ripeness, only becoming women once full heavy love was their desire inside and out. Maybe one. Maybe not quite one full century.
Source: Poetry (March 2019)