Parades

jenminotti
Sep 14
2 min read

By Cynthia Dorfman

PROMPT—Privilege ...

There it was. Right outside my window.

I must be special with a parade below.

It started with a sesquicentennial.

I sat in the bird cage of a balcony

at my grandmother’s Victorian legacied

house on the avenue named Trinity

for the church with the belfry

at the end of the street,

where chimes were rung by the odd sexton,

though the alabaster of his skin

welcomed him in the community.

A century plus fifty of existing

in the simplicity of homogeneity.

The whiteness of a breast

dressed in ignorance.

II.

There it was outside my window.

I must be special with a parade below.

The funeral procession with black limos

driving up the avenue named Independence.

A President in residence lying in his coffin

at the domed Capitol. He so esteemed

even though the trickled down

economics he ushered in created

inequality of income that separated

white from black and brown

caused calamity for the downtrodden.

III.

There it was outside my window.

I must be special with a parade below.

Blaring horns of pick-up trucks

accompany clanging pans and tins,

the detritus of recycling,

on a street named for a signer of the Constitution,

making its way to a park named for Madison,

both slave owners then.

A demonstration against brutality

of police and mobs on black lives lost in futility.

Watching parades from the edge of humanity

in a building parged for industry,

an antique shoe factory in a place

set aside for the black community

in an otherwise land of Scandinavians.

I heard the noise for George Floyd and the Kenosha boy—

the cacophony raised in a fanfare of empathy.

Epilogue

All of us are doomed to the same finality.

We flicker like fireflies gaslit in a world

spinning on a gyroscope of earth.

United by the same verdict but unique

with each rumble of the pounding on our inner drums.

Cynthia Dorfman writes from Maryland and Wisconsin, depending on the season. Her writing is a reflection of memories of and responses to the world she has observed for over 3/4 of a century. Her work has appeared in online and printed publications, most recently Moss Piglet, Ekphrastic Review, and the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast.