"Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere."
--G.K. Chesterton
"The man's body is sacred and the woman's body is sacred.../Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as much as you."
--Walt Whitman
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This entry was posted on 3/11/2009 3:15 PM and is filed under GLBT, Jendi's Poems.
This poem of mine was chosen by Chris Forhan as a runner-up for the 2008 Stephen Dunn Prize in Poetry from The Broome Review, and also appears in their Spring 2009 issue and on their website.
Wedded
Why can’t the dog and the cat get married, the postman to the bishop, the nurse to the queen? In the days when mud was chocolate we could march the egg cups down the table, humming that universal tune. The teddy bear and the piggy bank, the lightbulb and the tomato. Not all of these relationships would work out, as we knew from the sound of cloth tearing in another room. Still we imagined, in those days when peppermint was money, that a bit of lace thrown over the cat's spitting head would make her beautiful, and a dropcloth would stop the parrot quarreling with his mirror mate. We were dizzy with weddings, even when the books fell to the floor inky and torn, face-down like bridesmaids with their mascara running. Why do the things that were sold together, the obvious salt and pepper, rows of rolled socks like dull neighbors, always go missing? So we married the glove to the mitten, in those days when morning was bedtime, when lunch was rice flung in the street after the tin-can fugitives, we matched the boot to the baby's shoe and no guests came.
9/23/2009 1:25 PMYsabel de la Rosa wrote:
I don’t quite remember how I ended up on the site, but I found my way to the Broome Review and read your poem, “Wedded.” I thought it was beautiful, packed tight with meaning, written with both skill and restraint. From there, I found your blog Reiter’s Block. All I can say is Wow. Keep it up. It’s wonderful to read posts of that depth and substance. Reply to this
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