From the collection published in 2021, The Immediate and No Sooner.
At My Cousin’s Wedding
We sit down at our tables, some confused
by the forks and others by too much booze.
Shrimp a la pallid rubber cocktail snooze
in glass bowls. Sharp-eyed newlyweds peruse
cash gift totals. Please may I be excused?
2/14/20
10-10-10-10-10/5
Claudia McGill Writes Poetry, Did You Know That? 
It doesn’t sound like a very fun wedding.
Well, you know, some weddings seem as if they have a lucky star over them, I think, and then there are the others…
😀
I was always taught that the gifts were opened in the privacy of the home – after the wedding and NOT at the reception! Sounds like an unpleasant situation… I’d want to leave too!
You know, I’ve been to quite a few weddings now over the years of my life, and one thing I have learned, it seems that you never know what you’re going to encounter at these kinds of things, you have to roll with the situation. I include funerals and retirement parties and baby showers, too. Wow, what a lot of fodder there is for the observer at these events, isn’t there?