Melissa Studdard Incantation —for Paige and Kaveh Speaking of vows, someone mailed the bride an envelope filled with finch’s wings. As if love could ever be so simple. The groom said, Bring me this new dialect. I want to fill it with couplets. The bride said, First, show me the ladder in your throat. When they handed each other the promise, it looked like hoops of gold. But really it was a sunrise that will go on and on. After all, every poem is widest where it’s been stretched by lovers walking in twos. But this must be how all marriages begin: someone carrying an envelope filled with enchantment, someone opening it without breaking the wings. *Previously published in Cutthroat
We either will or will not die in this moment will or will not throw plastic into the ocean will or will not make love make love to the rumbling hood of the car and call it leaning will not or will throw ourselves off the narrow edge of the universe will or will not write the great American novel will smoke pot or not or not or not or will wreck the car will not will leave all our belongings to a river we drank and peed back into itself we will we will staple ourselves back into the marrow will dive deep into the hummingbird heart
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