A Vietnamese Wedding Party
a long parade of guests in pairs, longing for a chair or two,
a hundred or so, and their ice-creamed children,
pushing through the market sounds, the glistening fish and meat,
against the dying piggy- squeals, by the river’s flowing feet
wearing blacks and browns, some with prison- frowns, a tide against
the wedding's beach: and in amongst the throng, some young men in
bright shirts and Ray Ban shades, puzzled by the days significance, this
coiling snake of women’s delight
and as the anaconda enters the marital hall…(like Caesar coming into Rome),
the drunks, the pensive widows, the curious maids, their still pert breasts and
waists not yet destroyed by birth, dance in settled joy, into the leery mirth.
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