Kathleen Rooney was born in West Virginia and raised in the Midwest. She is the author of Reading with Oprah: the Book Club That Changed America (University of Arkansas, 2005) and a founding editor of Rose Metal Press. Her collaborative chapbook Something Really Wonderful, co-written with Elisa Gabbert, is available from dancing girl press, and their full-length collection That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness is available from Otoliths Books. She works as a Senate Aide and lives in Chicago with her husband, the writer Martin Seay. Oneiromance (an epithalamion) is her first single-author collection of poetry, (Switchback Press, 2008).
Niagara Falls: Scrapbook Three
Here it is, honey, the Honeymoon Capital--
Art Deco ziggurats & heart-shaped beds,
campaigning: FRIED DOUGH! EGG ROLLS!
Route 104 = Main Street USA. There are two
Hard Rock Cafes, one on each side of the border.
They rock us hard. Totally marriage-core.
Margaret Fuller, American writer, came in 1843
"to woo the mighty meaning from the scene."
The scene we see means differently now.
How come all these honeymooners? I wonder aloud,
because you always have an answer for these
things. Waterfalls = sex, you say. All that
thundering, that pounding, that resounding foam.
Also, from the middle of the country, you're not going
to make it to the beach since it's too far from home,
but you'll still try to reach a state outside your daily life.
As your new wife, I will scale the Space Needle
for you, make it play the low-hanging sky,
first track of the soundtrack for the rest
of our lives: Leisure leads to susceptibility
to love. Pleasure leads to susceptibility
to more pleasure. The AAA guidebook calls
our Howard Johnson an architectural treasure.
We'll never fornicate together again. So it goes.
I put the key in the lock & and the music crescendos.