Scenes from a Beach Wedding

Emerald waves, sugar white sand, rocking
Black boat, two lacey paper-cut people
Pose for a kiss, cannon fire from a pirate
Ship beyond the suicide rocks.
Where do the giraffes go to eat their young?
This cannot be done in front of tourists.
Silver starlings feather down their hoof prints.
A sweet smell wafts from the gingerbread
Lilies blooming in the gazebo window box.
Their diced blueberry eyes do not want to
Watch our lips touch. Their flat brown arms
Wave us away. Their down turned cherry
Icing smiles are full of dark prenuptial advice. Dying stingrays wash up on the shore, along
With wedding pearls, a heirloom cameo and Beach house blueprints. Messages in bottles
Are written on tarot cards, so many hanged
Men. The notched lavender sky is missing a Puzzle piece in the shape of a rope.
Floodlights drown the scene in hot silver light. The director catapults up from a lip shaped
Chair, throws off his leopard cape, puts his French cigar out in the aquarium.
Salt water splashes thin silhouettes Disintegrating them together into
Unrecognizable garbage to be eaten by a
Three-legged rat who gets shot over the swell
Of violin music and the crawl of closing credits
By friendly fire, of course.

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Biography

Rebecca Lu Kiernan is the editor of the print journal, GECKO. Her fiction has appeared in MS. MAGAZINE, SOUTHERN OCEAN REVIEW, NAKED POETRY, EXQUISITE CORPSE, GARGOYLE, and others, and is upcoming in ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION and NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. Her collection of poetry, "Sex With Trees And Other Things Equally Responsive" was released from 2River Press and can be viewed at www.2river.org