day of the bride

[nonsensical-fae.livejournal.com]

the day of the bride comes
through layers of white plaster skin
and multi-sashed kimono
head made huge by lacquered hair-----
she is swept ashore in her glass bottle
white and tight as a folded paper message
eyes hidden in a swirl of green boughs.
she moves like a mannequin
manoeuvred by centuries of ceremony
under the weight of speech and incantation
a wail of priest and watching families
beside rows of low tables
with small triangles of paper
congratulatory slits of squid and curls of seaweed.
then kneeling at the bend of fresh memory
she is discarded by her heavy day
and is plunged into the twentieth century
tiny apartment daily stream
as a barely visible
folded paper speck

joy kogawa