Wedding Ballad

by Jesse Morales

He came to the orchard barbecue
packing fruit and poison — pocketfuls
of dubious berries leaking blue, two
raw sweetgreen pomes budding on his face —
while porkfat whined from the rack-&-fire.

In mismatched socks he wandered the lawn
bellyaching.

Meantime his ankles, gray and maroon,
tickled a frisson of smiles away from corn peach
gossip & melonrind — he ached — “the pig’s done” —
he tapped a bass line to the conversation
till the music in his thumbs went dull.

In mismatched socks he wandered the lawn
bellyaching.

Ash-faced but whistling he parked by the spit
watching the grease roll down, his cake-and-honey bride
kissing him in the pauses, & he filling her kiss
with pokeberry wine — till she fell, slumped,
slumped & “what have you done?” a crying chord.

In mismatched socks he wandered the lawn
bellyaching.

The pig was picked to white of bone, twisted,
steaming, sweating marrow from every joint — & dizzy
he fled for the fence beyond, in the grassy apple grove
where his lover waited to hoist him free. Purplemouthed & sick,
he dumped his inky pockets, kissed a last kiss, rambled on.

In mismatched socks he wandered the lawn
bellyaching.

Jesse Morales is a lifelong Southerner. The longleaf pine landscape of her Sandhills home inspired her to begin writing as a child, as well as the oral memories of her colorful Texan family that her grandparents shared. Jesse’s poetry and prose has appeared or is forthcoming in Geez Magazine, The Coraddi and What the Fiction! Journal, among others. She writes from her home in Greensboro, North Carolina.