Post-Pride

We hoisted rainbows 

Caught in flags, chanted

Slogans praising Love, and gays and the puffy throats of guns,

And marched in the company of decorative floats,

Smooth, silky, automatic –

Themselves rolling, like pieces of clouds.

People kissed other people, nondescript 

            The roles of gender, and held hands

                        Firm, definite, moist –

As diffident eyes burst in cheers.

Streamers coiled toward the sky,

            Their bodies twined in helices.

Voices bent in shallow arches –
            The air tilted with applause
                        Raspy, explosive, successive.

So much applause, our voices
            Drowned in the tributary of a celebration,
Forgetting never, that you and me,
            Were illegal once, in the eyes
Of our Nation’s history.