Gay Marriage Poem
by Jenny Johnson
(published in her 2017 book, In Full Velvet, Sarabande Books)
We could promise to elope
like my grandmother did
if a football team won
on homecoming night.
We could be good queers?
An oxymoron we never
longed for. We could
become wed-locked
as the suffix was once intended:
laiko, Common Teutonic for play,
not loc, Old English for a cave,
an enclosure. Instead
of a suit, I could wear my T-shirt
that avows, “Support Your Right
to Arm Bears!” Or we could
wed in bear suits
just as I saw people do
one summer in San Francisco
standing amid a grassy median
during rush hour.
They were so personally
anonymously political
blocking the ocean breeze
in acrylic fur.
Forget such solemnities!
I want to run through streets
shouting up to all my beloveds’ windows:
Friends! In sickness and in health
I refuse to forsake you!
on Charlotte Street, Home,
Euclid, Decatur, Union,
Straubs, Rebecca, Bennett Ave.,
38th, Woolslayer Way.
In the only wedding I was a part of
I was the flower girl
who held up the ceremony
kneeling to drop equal dividends of
petals beside every pew,
refusing to leave anyone out.
Let us speak without occasion
of relations of our choosing!
Tied intricately
as the warps and wefts
amid mats of moss,
without competing for sunlight
our hairy caps are forever
lodging in spaces
that myopic travelers can’t see.
Of such loves unwrit, at the boundary layer
between earth and air,
I feel most clear.
I love the joy in this poem, and the way the way brings in so many disparate elements and makes them work together. Grandmother, homecoming, a little etymology, bears, armed bears, street names, a past as a flower girl . . . it's a lot to pull together.
An epithalamium is a poem written to express joy at the love between the newy married couple. Yet this poem also questions whether marriage is what "we" want": this is suggested in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th stanzas (tercets--stanzas of 3 lines each), as well as the images of play (a football game) and politics (stanzas 8 through 8).
Also, does anyone use the term "gay marriage" except for clueless straight people? Granted, in this context it gives us more meaning into the speaker and the poem (representation matters!), but it makes me giggle each time I read it, thinking of people who say things like, "Are you going to get gay married?" because I giggle when presented with awkward and awful things such as this.
The exuberance of the speaker is contagious; she tells us that she will not forsake any beloved, listing 10 partial addresses of them all. And then we are told that as a flower girl, she held up the wedding with her placement of the petals, becuase she refused to leave anyone out. What a clever connection!
I will make a huge assumption here, that this poem was written in response to the US federal law legalizing marriage between same-sex couples. I picture the speaker running around to these beloveds' homes, shouting up at them, jumping excitedly "between earth and air." In between married and single, legal and not, good queer and bad queer, the idea of "normal" and that of outsider--it is a lot to consider, and it is where the speaker ends up, where "I feel most clear."
This is not, of course, a feeling facing only gay couples, but anyone who takes marriage seriously. There is a lot to consider. And to go from a day when it is not possible to the next when suddenly it is possible is a lot to add to the state of in-between-ness.
This poem is a roller coaster, and the speaker invites us to have fun on her ride!
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