The Foxes

hold all weddings on Sundays.

It begins with champagne brunches— the upper-class way to drink before noon. They dip their narrow-tipped muzzles near the fizz, bubbles tickling their whiskers.

Just pour orange juice

to add twice as much class. They anticipate with flickering tails the parade. With delicate paws, vixens adjust pill box hats of mustard mushroom caps and moss. They gossip about the fox-groom—

A real jackal with bad table manners

and a den of minimal size. The ceremony begins— kits wearing oak leaf hats prance towards the clearing to the reedy tone of wooden flutes.

Genevieve Betts received her M.F.A. in creative writing in 2006 from Arizona State University. She earned a graduate tuition fellowship that allowed her to take part in such academic positions as an assistant editor for Hayden’s Ferry Review, as well as a co-instructor of creative writing associated with the Salvation Army.