This Route Includes A Fairy

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I don’t know what precisely I expected
to encounter in Salt Lake City, maybe
more of the white youth in white shirts
and ties, marching from a big temple, but 
in between visits to the surprising variety
of craft breweries and hipster coffee shops
we found the 2025 pride parade and I wasn’t ready 
for how huge, how hours long, how chock full 
of furries faithfully masked and tailed 
in the blazing heat, how fully throttled 
the Dykes on Bikes, how crisply flown 
the defiant, newly queered official city flags, 
how jolly and many the bears and the sleek
speedo-d queer swim club, how yellow-brick-road 
endless and rainbow-promising the massive, 
blocks-long trans flag, how Mormon-earnest 
the seething, joy-drunk church of the sidewalk 
extravaganza, and how strikingly transcendent 
this one ethereal fairy, rollerblading like a river 
past the ecstatic crowds, past gender shackles, 
past fear, past our sweaty cheers, trailing 
a thrilling excess of taffeta and glitter
down the most unlikely, most necessary avenue, 
the last place, I confess, I’d ever have hoped 
to receive such a benediction.

Audio: Liz Ahl reads “This Route Includes A Fairy”

Liz Ahl is the author of Beating the Bounds (2017) and A Case for Solace (2022), which received the 2023 NH Literary Award in poetry. Her most recent of several chapbooks, A Stanza is a Place to Stand, was published in 2023 by Seven Kitchens Press. Her work has appeared recently in Cherry Tree, Rhino, Sinister Wisdom, Moon City Review, South 85 Journal, Rogue Agent, and on The Slowdown. She is proud to be #80 in Headmistress Press’ Lesbian Poet Trading Card Series. She lives in New Hampshire.

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"This Route Includes A Fairy" by Liz Ahl