BRENDA SEROTTE



Wedding Roses

Three Deliriously Happy Partygoers

Just Married, May 13, 1943

Dais at Wedding of Lorraine & Abe,
December 19, 1954

Just Married, November 18, 2007

Just Married, January 15, 1983

White Roses

Poem of the Month




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



Memoir & Poetry

Memoir: The Fortune Teller's Kiss
A tale of growing up in the Bronx as a child belly dancer who catches polio, as predicted by her fortune-telling grandma.
Poetry
The Blue Farm: POEMS
Poems about the value of family, poetry, and the mystery of Peru.


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