Half a minute of my parents’ wedding
Poet: Joanne Epp
A five-second shot: the wedding car,
decked out with flowers. Cut to
the church steps, guests emerging,
chatting. Dark suts, white shirts.
Hats, full-skirted dresses. Faces
I would know, given the chance.
The wedding car again: he helps her out;
he speaks, she answers. Smiles.
Her pearl earring glints behind her veil.
Then back to the guests—a final
fleeting glimpse—and that’s all.
But what did he say to her, and she
to him, in those few seconds of film?
What small, inconsequential thing?
I want to tell my grandpa, slower, slower-
let the camera linger. I wasn’t there,
I don’t remember.
Joanne Epp is the author of Cattail Skyline (Turnstone Press, 2021), Eigenheim (Turnstone Press, 2015) and the chapbook Nothing But Time (Seven Kitchens Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Prairie Fire, The New Quarterly, Canadian Literature, and other journals. She lives in Winnipeg, Canada. Her web site is https://joanneepp.com