BRENDA SEROTTE

Two long white columns carried in as if they are a supine patient,
Horizontal, gentled edgewise

Past the plastered guests pressed against the walls, laughing, eating,
Liquor sloshing over glasses.

A full house of giddy laughter, not to mention
A far amount of tension.

So the flowers finally make their careful entrance.
The men who bring them climb the spiral staircase

Make a train, and on their way they thread the vines
Up and through the banister. Fragrance everywhere,

A perfume louder than the blare of the boleros playing
Surpassing all aromas from the kitchen.

Admit it: weddings bring a certain sadness
With excitement. Looking up, I spot my father

Crushing out a smoke, his tie, the heat are choking him
El Niño saw to that. And there sits Pearl, groom’s mother,

Keeper of the Gloom, her features frozen
About to lose her son to Love—Amor! Not so

The parents of the bride, who are altogether ready
And ecstatic. Suddenly, from upstairs

Comes a terrifying scream, seems a maid laid out the wrong
Color underwear for the bride: Lilac. Can’t be done.

Lilac is the color kiss of death, they say, bad luck for years.
Next time we look, the roses on the banister are gone,

Wilted, dead. They have succumbed. But music plays and people
Dance, all while white roses hang their heads,

Some toward East and some toward West. Guests arriving late
Still smell them faint.

But really all that’s left is one long, tired velvet rope wound ‘round the railing.
And down the stairs, and on the carpet, everywhere, a trail of

soft,
white
coins…




Brenda Serotte