It doesn’t pain me, this admitting
I’m a Midwest guy with a Midwest heart
some might christen a yokel’s sentiment.
I mean what is this
if not an overstretched exercise
in chronic oversharing?
If you need an unlikely someone plucked
out from the pack of extras
from a country song’s music video
or the lead in an unassuming
Hallmark movie
with the small-town charm and underlying
issues he’s still working out,
I could have been your guy.
On our honeymoon we went
to Red Lobster and thought ourselves
living large, the sweepstakes winners
we were and are and will one day
with any stroke
of good fortune be again. The morning after
our wedding we went to Bob Evan’s, in fact,
and my dwelling over such
matters makes me reconsider
this entry a belated
epithalamion, whatever
commemoration you might stomach
but which I hope might make you
swoon. What I’m after after all
this is to claim my dependence
on my stock and not feel stiffed,
to make a real meal
out of my meat-
and-potatoes loving, that stick-
to-your-bones kind of romancing,
this beleaguered schlub
willing to get his hands wet, down
and dirty, to fashion
these reaffirmed vows
into a hand-carved ring
from a bar of soap to wash
our fingers clean, admiring
the tan lines left over after
all these years.

Contributor Bio:

Jacob Schepers is the author of A Bundle of Careful Compromises (Outriders Poetry Project, 2014), the chapbook Connections & Choreography (Bottlecap Press, 2024), and the micro-chap Shipwreck Abstracted (Ghost City Press, 2024). His poems have recently appeared in or are forthcoming in antiphony, DIALOGIST, The Greensboro Review, Harpur Palate, Heavy Feather Review, Hobart, Indianapolis Review, The Shore, Psaltery & Lyre, and elsewhere. With Sara Judy, he edits ballast. More at www.jacobschepers.com, @JacobSchepers on Instagram and @jacobschepers.bsky.social on Bluesky.