Sheryl St. Germain.
“Night Parade.”
© Sheryl St. Germain.
Used by permission.
All rights reserved.
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.
Text prepared by:
- Bruce R. Magee
Source
Sheryl St. Germain. “Night Parade.” Let It Be a Dark Roux. Pittsburg: Autumn House Pr., 2007. © Sheryl St. Germain. Used by permission. All rights reserved.