"He Marries the Stuffed-Owl Exhibit at the Indiana Welcome Center" by Patricia Lockwood

He Marries the Stuffed-Owl Exhibit
at the Indiana Welcome Center

He marries her mites and the wires in her wings,

he marries her yellow glass eyes and black centers,

he marries her near-total head turn, he marries

            the curve of each of her claws, he marries

the information plaque, he marries the extinction

            of this kind of owl, he marries the owl

that she loved in life and the last thought of him

in the thick of her mind

            just one inch away from the bullet, there,

                                            he marries the moths

who make holes in the owl, who have eaten the owl

almost all away, he marries the branch of the tree

that she grips, he marries the real-looking moss

and dead leaves, he marries the smell of must

that surrounds her, he marries the strong blue

            stares of children, he marries nasty smudges

of their noses on the glass, he marries the camera

that points at the owl to make sure no one steals her,

so the camera won’t object when he breaks the glass

while reciting some vows that he wrote himself,

he screams OWL instead of I’LL and then ALWAYS

LOVE HER, he screams HAVE AND TO HOLD

and takes hold of the owl and wrenches the owl

away from her branch

                      and he covers her in kisses and the owl

thinks, “More moths,” and at the final hungry kiss,

“That must have been the last big bite, there is no more

of me left to eat and thank God,” when he marries

the stuffing out of the owl and hoots as the owl flies out

under his arm, they elope into the darkness of Indiana,

Indiana he screams is their new life and WELCOME.

They live in a tree together now, and the children of

Welcome to Indiana say who even more than usual,

and the children of Welcome to Indiana they wonder

where they belong. Not in Indiana, they say to themselves,

the state of all-consuming love, we cannot belong in Indiana,

            as night falls and the moths appear one by one, hungry.

Source of the text – Patricia Lockwood, Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals.  New York: Penguin Poets, 2014, pages 7-8.

TJB: Hoosier epithalamium. In a litany bursting with life, a funny, insane blazon, the poet describes a man marrying a stuffed owl. Far cry from Jack & Diane.