Nuptials on a Variable-Message Sign

 I'm standing in the parking lot of the strip mall

wearing your wedding dress

listening to a corgi bark inside a locked station wagon

The clouds whip by like in a time-lapse film

Seagulls dive into the puddles of mouthwash

that dot the lumpy asphalt,

their beaks no longer reeking of anchovies

Across the street they’re clearing the field of stumps

to build another strip mall

even though this one is abandoned save

for a nail salon and a check cashing place

and a drive-through Wendy’s

The bridesmaids smoke behind the dumpsters,

occasionally removing their heads and swapping them

back and forth out of boredom.
The priest has arranged orange traffic cones
in the shape of a cross, though we asked him not to.

Days have passed and you still haven't shown up

I knew I shouldn't have lent you my tux

with the Houdini sleeves, chances are

you're still at home, struggling to get out the door,

trying to turn that milky glass doorknob with your teeth

while I gaze down at the concrete ring I bought you

with its huge hunk of 24 karat gravel

and absently pat the hand truck I bought

to help you wheel it around

our names engraved in flowering script

across the handle, mine intentionally misprinted

in a private joke which only one of us remembers

The bulldozers and backhoes rumble back and forth

across the street 

The years rumble past as well. 

The bridesmaids have gotten fat on Wendy’s 

and we buried the priest some time ago, there was no one

to say the eulogy

but that Corgi’s still yapping the back seat

of the station wagon, I don’t know how,

and I’m thinking I’m not going to get

that deposit back on the space beneath the underpass

we rented for the reception