Pride poem

This year's Pride march and celebrations have been more widely reported this year than at any time I can remember. Here's a poem from my forthcoming collection, Arc, about Pride nearly two decades ago. It was also on the long list for the Ver poetry prize last year and is featured in the competition anthology.


Exodus

Gay Pride Festival, Clapham Common, 1996

I remember, chiefly, that shocking light,

how we squinted up from the earth,

bleached by the very summer that floored us –

how through that light emerged those thin-armed

boys from my class, proclaiming themselves

the heralds of memory, even that one

I’d hit for calling me queer. Now

our lustrous presence was all the proof

required. We sucked at cans of Red Stripe,

lounged in glare like exiles thrown

on a luminous shore, scuffing at it,

heel by heel, until the dust

threw up another move. Come

to think, we already had the people

we needed – hawkers of ironic

T-shirts and merchants of the old

religion, saving us all in brand new

drag. But then someone was grabbing

the mic. A thousand balloons cut loose

from their net, a pulsing vermilion

arc, while men made little huddles

of grief in twos and threes, their faces

tight with fat and beautiful tears.

I stalked to the edge of the crowd, chippy

as some lad who just missed out

on the war. A whole new country was set

before me, refusing to be ignored.