Brazilian Wedding

A family of sweeping eyebrows.
Men wearing fuzzy caterpillars
Women wearing winged seagulls.
Outdoor canopy borrowed, resuscitated
from some past political event.
National beer
flowing free
in cups and across tablecloths.
Band playing bouncing beats of forro
from the improvised stage–
neither expert
nor always melodic
but always rhythmic
and enthusiastic.
Red, Brazilian mud grabbing your feet
relieving you of your shoes
and caking the soles
until we all danced on platform shoes.
Women balancing in fancy high heels
slipping, sliding in the thick grease
giggling and shrieking with delight as
they slid down the driveway.
Scraping the dance floor clean
with a hoe.
Thick layer of mud;
each dance set leaving the dirt floor
a little lower than before.
Aunties lamenting the rains
that lessened the turnout
to only three hundred.
A line for the home-cooked dinner
that wound down to the street.
A red mud carpet
throughout the house.
It matched the bride’s colors
perhaps that’s why
no one cared.