Pictures for a Wedding Book

This article originally appeared in Southern Exposure Vol. 4 No. 4, "Generations: Women in the South." Find more from that issue here.

1969.

I marry the banjo boy.

It is quick:

in our parent’s church,

with his aunt’s ring,

our turquoise-pink-lace

weeping mothers,

our fathers

grim in black;

uncles, aunts,

war hero cousins,

everybody embarrassing

everybody else,

and the banjo boy

as pale and mum

as if he is about to be

wheeled in for surgery.

And I: silly in the virgin white,

saying kind things for once

to my sister, who at fourteen

is five feet ten

and licking her chops

for sex.