Samuel Washington Allen Prize Honorable Mention, selected by Marilyn Nelson
The Running of the Brides
Were I to marry you today, as it says in the Song
of Songs, I will rise now, and go about the city
in the streets, and in the broad ways,
I would take the T to Downtown Crossing
to get a place in line before 6:30 a.m. when the doors
open at Filene’s Basement for the annual Running
of the Brides, the organza extravaganza, all wedding
dresses: 99.99. No tax on clothes in Massachusetts,
but, keep the penny, call it an even hundred.
His lips like lilies, dropping sweet smelling myrrh.
His legs are as pillars of marble, set upon sockets
of fine gold: his mouth is most sweet.
I dash in with the other gals and grab one.
Some have come with their bridesmaids, mothers
and a strategy. Mom deploys to full length mirror;
the rest requisition all they can carry, piling dresses
in a free-form fortress. The brides strip
to their underwear for fittings. The smart ones brought
their own high heels, How beautiful are thy feet
with shoes, O Prince’s daughter, and wore strapless
push-up bras. They remembered rubber bands and bobby
pins to put up their hair, while mine is as a flock of goats.
No dress rehearsal for me. I’m off
to Government Center and work by 8.
It won’t fit
through X-Ray screening.
I’ll ask my pal at Security
to wand it
while I hold it up,
a PAID sticker stuck on the tag
showing the dress is from Nieman Marcus
and worth 6 grand. Oh, Needless Mark-up.
He motions me over.
So, this means it’s ov-ah between us?
-Hey, Kevin, we’ll always have Boston.
At the elevator, I get that sly, knowing smile
to which I respond demurely. The doors open.
Would you hit 22? Thanks. Slow today….
The joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work
of the hands of a cunning workman. Stay me
with flagons, comfort me with apples. O my dove,
that art in the clefts of the rock.
–Lady with the wedding dress, your floor.
I try the side back door. Damn, changed the code again.
I’ll have to get buzzed in at the front.
By the time I’m at my desk,
you’d think I were the Pied Piper. Is there something, perchance,
you have neglected to mention to your esteemed colleagues? Because
if you think you’re getting out of here without trying that thing
on for us, you’re wrong. Now, get your papers, they just switched
our meeting to Conference Room B. Remember, you’re covering
number 3 on the agenda. I hope you’re ready, Bitch.
They’ll have coffee.
Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not
liquor: thy belly is like a heap of wheat set about with lilies.
I’m trying to pay attention, honest. This thy stature is like to a palm tree,
and thy breasts to clusters of grapes. I’ve never been a traditional
bride, burdened with silver and china, duplicate toasters, certainly
not the first time, in my teens, when I was running away from home,
certainly, not now, as I plight thee my troth.
As for my dowry, I have books, school debts.
I gave up marriage, that bourgeois institution.
I wanted complete freedom. I had lovers I loved
deeply. Others, of course, and, yes, a few blunders.
My life was satisfying, nothing was missing.
If someone had told me I would marry,
I would have said, You have the wrong crystal ball.
We had just met.
I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine of the juice of my
pomegranate. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth:
for thy love is better than wine. It happened through our bodies,
as all things must. His left hand should be under my head,
and his right hand should embrace me. Our bodies together.
I said, I will goup to the palm tree, I will take hold of the boughs
thereof: now also thy breasts shall be as clusters of the vine.
At some point, we were no longer running parallel
in individual ecstasies. We slipped a boundary.
At first, I was frightened, the parts that had held me
together were disintegrating, but I did not turn back,
nor did you and you, too, were changing, inalterably.
We were no longer parts of which to make a greater sum.
We had broken into a different dimension
where those terms had no distinction.
To answer the question, How did he propose?
That was never the question.
I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.
Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
the flowers appear on the earth;
the time of the singing of birds is come.
[Endnote: Phrases throughout are from The Song of Solomon,
in mixed order. See, generally, chapters 1-8, King James Version (KJV).]
Patricia Sheppard is a Visiting Scholar at Brandeis University, Women’s Studies Research Center. She is the author of a chapbook, If You Would Love Me, (Finishing Line Press, 2018). Her poems have appeared in The Antioch Review; The Hudson Review; The Iowa Review; The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (winner, First Place, Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Contest, 2015); in Irises: The University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize 2017, (Australia), a compendium of prize winners and selected entries; and elsewhere.