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enjoy this writing from Christine Stoddard in the free 6" x 9" 2017 PDF file chapbook: The Eating Game (click on the front cover image or the title text to download the free PDF file) |
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She recalled looking in the mirror
after trying on 30 wrong dresses
and sobbing until
she dry-heaved.
Blood nourishes.
Taste the vitamins.
After the ceremony, stuck behind a crashed car,
the bride wiped away her smeared mascara.
Her tears fell in rhythm with her
desperate breaths as
her mother held her hand.
Her back hurt almost to
the point of not hurting.
At age six, she trimmed half an inch
off the side of her paper doll
because she thought her plump.
The prettiest girl in class
had a protruding collarbone.
When the driver announced that
they had arrived, the bride packed
her compact and stepped out
of her carriage and shed her
fur stole and darted to
her dressing room.
Some moments cut like slices
and there is no way to
gather them up again.
The skinniest slivers
slipping through fingers.
Huddled in their car three traffic lights away,
her bridesmaids soaked in the city.
Skyscrapers glowed periwinkle
from behind the elegant deception
of polluted fog that glimmered
in the first whispers of winter.
One month before the wedding,
a man who promised to grab pussies
was elected and
throngs of New Yorkers
protested outside the
seat of his kingdom
peering and sneering over Fifth Avenue.
But that night,
throngs of tourists
roamed the streets
lined with Christmas trees.
Once her mother vanished, the new wife
guzzled champagne and popped a Percocet.
Her body did not feel like her body.
The bride stared out the window and
onto the sprawl of storied
buildings upon buildings.
Maybe her body was
not her body.
Maybe her body had
never been her body.
Did Virgin Mary’s body feel like her body
when God touched her womb?
The bride peeled off her gloves
and marched downstairs
to wide applause from
the wedding guests.
When she met her groom’s eyes
from across the ballroom,
he did not see the ghost of her.
The bride sniffed the crab cakes.
Savor the smell. Eat the smell.
Then she danced and mingled
and danced some more.
Ribs and tulle
happily ever after.
