First Love: A Quiz by A. E. Stallings

He came up to me:
a. in his souped-up Camaro
b. to talk to my skinny best friend
c. and bumped my glass of wine so I wore the
ferrous stain on my sleeve
d. from the ground, in a lead chariot drawn by
a team of stallions black as crude oil and
breathing sulfur: at his heart, he sported a
tiny golden arrow.

He offered me:
a. a ride
b. dinner and a movie, with a wink at the
cliché
c. an excuse not to go back alone to the
apartment with its sink of dirty knives
d. a narcissus with a hundred dazzling petals
that breathed a sweetness as cloying as
decay.

I went with him because:
a. even his friends told me to beware
b. I had nothing to lose except my virginity
c. he placed his hand in the small of my back
and I felt the tread of honeybees
d. he was my uncle, the one who lived in the
half-finished basement, and he took me by
the hair

The place he took me to:
a. was dark as my shut eyes
b. and where I ate biter seed and became ripe
c. and from which my mother would never take me
wholly back, though she wept and walked the
earth and made the bearded ears of barley
wither on their stalks and the blasted
flowers drop from their sepals
d. is called by some men hell and others love
e. all of the above

68 thoughts on “First Love: A Quiz by A. E. Stallings

  1. I thought it was going to be a love poem, but the poem is about a tragic event of date rape. The poem gives details of a girl’s account of how a date was initiated, and up until the rape by her uncle. I am confused about her liking her uncle in a romantic way, and going out on a date with him. The poem gives feelings and imagery of how the girl was asked out on a date, the movie and dinner, being taken to the apartment, and the rape. The girl was told by friends to be aware of him, but she went with him anyway because she liked him. Her innocence was taken in a love and rape situation. The girl now lives with shame, regret, ‭disgust, and a strained relationship with her mother. My question is, what about the uncle and mother’s relationship?

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