Marriage

Routines or rites? Featuring poems by Kathy Mangan, David J. S. Pickering and Ann McGovern.
7 minutes

TRANSCRIPT

In a normal year, we think of June as the month for brides and weddings. But first of all, this has been far from a normal year in so many ways. And second, I recently read a couple fun wedding-related stories that I thought you might enjoy. In honor of those and so many other April weddings, some pieces about marriage.

The first story is about the historian Edward Gibbons; he’s the 18th Century British historian best known for his book The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. When he was 30, on April 27, 1837, he was walking with his lady friend Elizabeth Foster, and he drops down onto one knee and asks her to marry him. She asks him to please rise, but he’s so overweight that he can’t. He may still be there, for all I know. And I also don’t know whether or not she accepted his proposal.

I also don’t know if Kathy Mangan proposed to her husband John or he to her. But the other one did accept that proposal, and years later, they remain married. Here’s Kathy’s poem “The Puzzlers: A Love Sonnet” from her book Taproot. It begins with the epigraph “for JTW.”

She closes the waking day with her cross-
word, he with his Sudoku folded tight
from the morning Sun – hip to hip, each lost,
puzzling in bed – arranging aright

their letters and numbers, filling the squares
with permanent ink, each blank a precinct
housing exact ciphers, key integers,
their search for solutions an unparsed link

till she curls towards him for the Jumble.
Head on his heart-pulse, she helps unscramble
clues; while he scribbles, she mouths syllables.
Together they pursue the possible:

discover the answers, end confusion,
turn into each other for sleep, suffused.

Kathy Mangan’s poem “The Puzzlers: A Love Sonnet.”

April was a big month for advancing marriage equality: state supreme court cases in Iowa and Vermont and legislation in several states, as well as in Sweden, the Netherlands, and Hungary.

David J. S. Pickering said, “Some years before gay marriage became legal, I wanted a “real” marriage ceremony at my progressive UCC church, and good sport that he is, my partner and now husband agreed to it. My wedding day remains one of the best days I’ve ever had.” He said the phrase “be a Sadie” is taken from the song “Sadie, Sadie (Married Lady)” from the musical, Funny Girl. He said, “Every gay man over a certain age knows the words to this song.” Here’s David’s poem “I Came from My Marriage to Tell You This.” It begins with the epigraph “for Stephen.”

Such a hetero construct. I know.
But I needed to be a Sadie, needed
the sacrament. I knew who I was
without those vows, how thin

it would otherwise hang. Still,
I said to myself, if it doesn’t take,
maybe I’ll get myself a new couch
out of it. Thinking first of him

was my job, then a superstition,
then it was mindful practice, then,
finally, a benediction, a blessing
for the uncertain days ahead

saying, I am for you and no other.
Even to our final days I am true.

From Passager’s 2024 Poetry Contest issue, “I Came from My Marriage to Tell You This” by David J.S. Pickering.

And finally, on April 3, 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald married Zelda Sayre. They honeymooned at the Biltmore Hotel in New York, and they were so rowdy and boisterous that the hotel threw them out.

When I read that, I remembered this poem by Ann McGovern from Passager’s 21st Anniversary anthology Burning Bright. Ann said she wrote what she referred to as “this raunchy poem” for her 84 year old lover. She said, “My grandchildren are highly embarrassed by it.” Here’s Ann’s raunchy but wonderful poem “Old Geezer.”

1
He’s a sniffer, my 80-year-old new love.
You’re my creature, he says.

He squeals, tastes, snorts and sighs,
savors my wells and rivulets.

I drink in his thirsts, stroke and stoke his embers,
relish this old man who makes my body blush.

In the morning we wonder why we
are so tired. We begin again.

2
My 80-year-old geezer is not pleased when at six a.m.
I gently remove his fingers from my nipple,
find my nightgown and put it on.
After 70, one doesn’t parade.

I wake in the night to wandering fingers
that creep into my bursting places.
I need sleep. But there are the stars
that stream into our bed.

Ann McGovern’s “Old Geezer.”

To buy Kathy Mangan’s book Taproot or Passager’s 21st anniversary anthology Burning Bright, or to subscribe to or learn more about Passager and its commitment to writers over 50, go to passagerbooks.com.

You can download Burning Bright from Spotify, Apple and Google Podcasts, and various other podcast apps. Passager offers a 25% discount on the books and journal issues featured here on Burning Bright. Visit our website to see what’s on sale this week.

For Kendra, Mary, Christine, Rosanne, and the rest of the Passager staff, I’m Jon Shorr.