Fifty Bridegrooms, Jason Reid (December 2025)

Fifty Bridegrooms

She was there again. “How was your summer?”
She asked. “Better than the spring.” He replied.
For he had been forced to think April cruel.
And could now never forgive the author.
She moved on and he saw her aright:
Furtively grappling with some Aeneas,
Her belt ashine gleamed his eyes to clarity:
A bottle-blonde whore belted up from boy Pallas.
Forty-nine bridegrooms slaughtered in bed,
And in that belt, an ignorant implied
Boast of one more marred beyond life’s limits.
He tried to make the argument for her,
To return Turnus to simple sympathy:
Aeneas had no right to Italy
But divine. He stopped: everyone longs for home,
Even if it does not bring peace. That is
What dreams are for. And in that, he knew her,
And what she opposed. We need not ask Troy
What we had built it for. We built it for
Peace, in and against the dread hope of war.