There were the parades

where I sat on a boy’s shoulders

for the first time, lifted

high and parentless above

the swaggering crowds,

where I gripped his head with

my thighs, listened for his voice

with my open legs,

waved for beads and coins

that were hurled at us like all

I knew of love then, the beads curling

over us like coupled snakes, coins

ringing escape onto the streets,

the boy breathing hard underneath me,

and the slobbering grumbles

of motorcycles, like the first grunts of sex,

the first hardness felt in the first

groping darks, and the marching bands,

the mouths of their tubas and trumpets

shining and wet with out faces in the night,

and the floats, all lit up

and moving toward you,

your first and last chance

at something.