Wedding Train by John C. Mannone

The party arrived—a long train
of cars, as if coupled, followed
each other and filled the grass
plot adjacent to the barnhouse.

The bride and her entourage
gathered in the powder room
for final make-up and lipstick
while the very nervous groom,

tuxed, in a backroom, smoked
some stash to take the edge off,
but got a little stoned instead.
He shuffled through the archway

in the backyard garden to
make his vows, and giggled
like a schoolboy. His cravat
disheveled, shirt inching out

from his suspenders. His bride
was escorted by her brother
to a jazzed-up Pachelbel beat
still in D, just not adagio.

Meanwhile, a squirrel rooted
around the attic, bit the electric
wiring that fried it like a fritter
and smoke seeped out. Soon

flames roared like a runaway
freight train, people screamed
and ran. The shit-faced groom
tripped over his soon-to-be-wife’s

satin train, careened into the food
table. He went flying with potato salad,
pound cake and corn. Catapulted forks
and knives stabbed the bride’s arm.

Expletives flew too. After the loud
commotion was snuffed out,
the doctor in the house, a friend
of the groom, stitched her up

with catgut thread real good,
too good—he embroidered his
own initials with the sutures
(he had a head start on the whiskey).

She wasn’t too happy, ranted
like a witch, but who’d blame her?
But this was nothing new. She often
flourished on epithets groomed for him.

His friends had warned him to not
be railroaded into this marriage;
they’d say, Leave her! Run away
full throttle. But he liked her

caboose too much….The end
of this tale.

John C. Mannone has work in Adanna Literary Journal, Anacua Literary Arts Journal, and Number One, and in Artemis, Poetry South, Human/Kind Journal, Red Coyote, Blue Fifth Review, New England Journal of Medicine, Baltimore Review, and others. He won a Jean Ritchie Fellowship in Appalachian literature (2017) and served as the celebrity judge for the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (2018). He’s a retired professor of physics living between Knoxville and Chattanooga, TN. http://jcmannone.wordpress.com