Erin Elizabeth Smith

Alice Attends Bonne’s Wedding

Once  you lean into the hole,
there’s no going back.  First the fall

with its fisted jam and bric-a-brac,
your body that hit the leafy earth

with a murmured oomph.  There are no
ladders tall enough to get you out—here, there is

only forward momentum, your lily stilleto
tottering toward an altar white as heat.

Toni cues Elvis on the PA, and we all hush
to see you in your sequined bustier, the practiced

up-doo cobwebbed and spun, until I cannot
recognize the woman who just last night

bubbled over in her bourbon, thinking
about the man who now waits in his dress blues

naked on top another woman, her long hair
spread across your pillow. I have been here too,

glitzed up and white, gardenias clamped in wet
hands, small-stepping toward a man

I could not trust.  I took his long finger, roped
it in gold, and for an instant, I thought I’d woken,

Lorina stroking my short child locks while the cows
lowed in the green.  But the story can’t end

that way.  Instead, you each take up your flame,
and see which fires the wick first.

 


 

¨

 Bio: Erin Elizabeth Smith

Sesquicentennial Alice

How to Get Dry


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