Sign Inventory, Make-up for Week Eight

"Marriage," by Erika Meitner

Tonight the slick streets are packed
with young blond girls. One after another
they careen down sidewalks
wearing bachelorette headwear,
flimsy bride-to-be veils. One last
hurrah. Buck a suck, a drunk girl slurs,
stumbles with lifesavers stuck carefully to her shirt --
offers up the rainbow rings taped near her breasts
to my friend Mitch for the right price,
but lurches off, bumbling headlong
into Saturday night traffic before he can answer.
Protected by a pack of women weaving on,
under the streetlamp's orange pool
she looks like a moth -- one minute her veil
fluttering behind her as wings; the next,
blown forward over her face,
a window screen she'll thump into nightly
toward the light of an impenetrable house.


Sign Inventory:


1) On a larger scale, one of the more interesting ways in which this poem manifests is through the speaker relating a particular scene taking place during a bachelorette party.... to then work turn to the frame of marriage. So what?
2) So, if the narrator, who seems to be speaking of this event  rather negatively, stops to provide a specific scene analysis of this event, what might it suggest? On the one hand, the speaker certainly appears concerned about the notion of "one last hurrah" before marriage. But why? Does the last 'hurrah' suggest a last round of freedom before being strapped into the confines of marriage, before being imprisoned for the rest of the bride-to-be's life? Also, the speaker's tone seems to insinuate that this is an innate, unconscious happening. By this, I mean, that the piece seems to call attention to the way girls dream and fantasize about getting married, yet they celebrate this one last night of freedom, for what reason? When you really stop and think about the pop culture tradition this has turned into.. it turns into a quiet interesting study.
3) The text also places great emphasis on the wedding 'veil', but in a more unconventional way. The first image we get of the veils, each young girl wears one. This is significant to the piece, I believe, because this presents a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the veils underscore and highlight the fantastical elements of being a bride-to-be, symbolizing every girls "ideal" dream for their future. On the other hand, however, the veil(s) undermine the exact same notion previously mentioned, because the text incorporates satirical irony, critiquing these identical girls... who have, ultimately, been indoctrinated into this way of thinking, and only continue to perpetuate these conventions (without being consciously aware of what they are actively participating in).
4) The next mention of the veil, then, relates specifically to the bride-to-be. "One minute her veil / fluttering behind her as wings..." Here, the veil acts as wings, giving her agency and freedom of flight, during this one last night of 'hurrah'. But, then, "the next, / blown forward over her face, / a window screen she'll thump into nightly / toward the light of an impenetrable house." Now, the veil turns into something completely different. Now the veil acts as a screen, one that is imprisioning and eerily 'impenetrable'... a trap, a prison, etc... Perhaps, then, the veil is a smaller semiotic sign of a larger reading of marriage.