|
KATHLEEN ROONEY |
Brazilian Wedding: Dream no. 2
On the night before my wedding
I decide to become a nun, roaming
favelas in my nurse-white nunfit.
I weigh other people’s babies:
babies like sacks of pudding,
babies like clouds, babies so loud
I have to wear earplugs,
alien babies curled like shrimp,
limping babies with toothless mothers.
Mothers carrying their babies in slings,
flinging their breasts out like udders
to feed them. A pregnant girl walks by
in an English T-shirt, purple on
white:
Why do we learn what we learn?
Sem Palavras—Without Words—
a huge photo firm comes to take
my picture to run under the headline:
American woman overcomes her ego.
When you read word of my decision,
you don’t say anything, but your
nostrils flare: that sharp intake
of air you used to make while fucking.
No one is declared unfit for help.
Brazilian Wedding: Dream no. 7
Dulcet, hortatory, sesquipedalian,
our uncle, the Bishop, delivers a
toast.
An epithalamion: homage to the glorious
states of our unions.
May you, Beth & Nick—
May you, Kathy & Martin—
be each other’s North Stars
always & Southern Crosses.
One
another’s
bold standards & hot-weather marks.
You will long for each other like the walrus
for the full moon,
& if anything happens
to one, it will be like jogger in the
others’ hearts.
Glasses clink like the beads of a rosary.
Guests scatter the dance floor
like beads of mercury.
Lightning strikes
the spike driven into the palm tree
next to the Shrine, designed to draw
lightning.
Beth & I drop our glasses,
but the guests just shake their asses
that much harder.
By the light of the white flash,
we see aqua fish leap from the aqua
sea,
quoting Aquinas in the original Latin:
If the highest aim of a captain
were to preserve his ship, he would keep
it in port forever.
Beth snaps a photo: me,
thumbs-up, with them arcing
in the background—a chorus
of talking animals reciting our fates.
Niagara Falls
Effluvia, whortleberries, & such
soft light!
a lunar
lambency over choppy waves
& us reeling through: slaves to
the majesty
of the oldest
state park. So pretty,
so perfect, so
perfectly unreal. We feel
we have to
find the artist’s signature.
We seek it in the corner. We peel
the scene—
translucent scrim—roll
it up to keep it
clean & stick
it in the back seat.
We will take it home. We save it
forever.
The flowers sing in purples &
pinks,
& everywhere, the metallic stink
of ions!
Pearls of
foam, pearls of water.
I imagine the future. I will give
you gifts
made of various
materials. We’ve been
hitched for less
than a year.
Pearls are the present for the
thirtieth
anniversary, couples
stitched by needles
of decades.
You’ve never loved lists
the way I do,
& yet you declare:
You are the nonpareil—the
girl to end
all other
girls. I am your oyster.
I am the diver. I am the
jeweler.
You are the pearl.
Niagara Falls
Our passports have changed, but we didn’t change
them: Honeymoon Groom & Honeymoon
Bride.
We use them to cross to the Canadian side. Rainbow
Bridge. The obelisk looms. The border
guard’s eyes
burn holes into our own. Foam flumes. Enjoy
your
time here, then head on home. It didn’t used to be
so hard to roam, but what can one say?
Sleazy
is classier than sleazy
A Lion & a Unicorn cavort at the base of the great
stone phallus pricking the sky. Which one
are you?
Which one am I? An engraving from Genesis unites
the two: the Token of the Covenant.
We’re hungry
& it’s convenient, so we eat at the
no secret to tour buses. Outside the
glass walls,
water rushes & everything is wet
& bottle-green.
Inside violets wilt in vases on tables amid fliers
advertising Flight of Angels Helium Balloon
Rides.
A Kiss in the Dark costs $6.95. The place is alive
with international voices. You are
talking about choices.
About what we can do next. I can’t tell whether
you’ve called me your future or your
creature.
Here, center is spelled centre & we spread butter
doubly labeled beurre on yeasty bread. We head
back again. Rigorous border controls
that weren’t there
before. C’est
la vie. C’est la guerre. C’est Septembre. C’est l’amour.
|
|
|
