Honeymoon Period

by Brent Fisk

The bride blacked the groom's eyes with her tiny fists. Grass stained both knees, and he wobbled away in his bloody, ruffled shirt, tossing his cummerbund in the punch bowl. Small children sucked on mesh bags of rice, crayoned the pages of black-spined hymnals. The white doves huddled in their cages, pink eyes blinking through the wire. Both mothers sunk in their pews, flesh erupting from the runs in their nylons. Everyone glared at the minister, who thumbed his Bible and would not look up for anything.

6S

Brent Fisk is a three-time Pushcart nominee who recently won an honorable mention in Boulevard's Emerging Poets contest. His work has appeared in Mimesis, Rattle, Fugue, and Southern Poetry Review among other places.