Apart from working on a new play about werewolves, here’s my most recent piece of writing…
The Marriage License
They don’t let you throw rice at weddings anymore.
They say the birds will eat it and die.
Their stomachs will swell, they say,
engorged and bursting until they pop,
like the plastic firecracker champagne bottles
on New Year’s Eve,
bright streamers spurting out across the air
So throw confetti instead,
white paper scattered on the steps of the church,
or throw salt over your left shoulder
to ward off whatever demons may be waiting there
one mistake and you’re theirs forever
plagued by misfortune and accident and tragedy
flocks of sorrows battering the windowpane
year after year.
Or throw salt to preserve
the two fleshes now made one,
salt to preserve it over the long season ahead,
against lean times and fat,
year after year,
seasoned and preserved against rot
Throw salt, throw paper,
throw tradition to the wind,
but spare the birds.
First anniversary is paper, traditionally.
Perhaps stationary that you send away,
or thank-you cards we forget to send at all,
or name plates embossed with your name and mine
mingled, hyphenated
however tradition and our modern sensibilities
can be balanced best,
tilting on the thin dash of ink
that joins us together on paper,
witnessed,
see saw,
tilting back and forth through those first years
the petty fights and drunken couplings,
slapping back and forth, end to end
see saw
jolting us with each bounce
tick tock, once a week at first, and then once a month
and then not at all.
In these modern times
some people give a clock
on their first anniversary
instead of paper
just to pass the time.
Tenth Anniversary is tin
dull and cold and lifeless,
you can work at it all you like
but it’ll never give you back anything more
than a dull gleam.
It will always look and feel older
than it really is, tin will.
If the modern sensibility wins out
then a diamond might replace tin
more expensive, certainly
but cold and lifeless as well
cold, dead, tired.
Coming back home, dead tired
after a long trip,
coming home after ten years
of coming home,
coming home to a pile of shredded paper
in the middle of the kitchen table,
a snowdrift scattering in the breeze
as I pass by moving through the house
sour and clammy
sweat stains ruining the perfectly good white shirt
that you ironed, starched the night before I left
hangers rattling on the rod
in your empty closet
the mattress stripped naked and stained, old stains
the kitchen cupboard emptied of wedding presents
no more plates and cups with matching prints
no more flatware, no more silverware
no more brass on the mantle
no more picture frames with us inside
running down the steps in our nice clothes
holding hands in a snowstorm in August
ten years back.
Only a drift of shredded paper on the table,
a ransom note, a crossword puzzle
carefully torn to bits
spelling out, I don’t know,
a new contract for our marriage,
shuffling the pieces of the old one
deconstructed to the bare bones
of what we swore
and when
and who witnessed it all
now just typeface, scattered and speckled
with letters and dates
bird tracks in the snow
They should have thrown ashes for us,
white and gray in the August air,
ashes to season the meat
for the long bitter feast ahead.
