#hellishly

I tasted honeysuckle for the first time

Here, off a bush outside Mark’s Drugstore.

My grandmother urged the sticky velvet

Bulb into my mouth,

And picked a handful more for the walk home.

 There is no order to this town.

Suiting, then, that part of Twister

Was filmed in the drive in.

My mother remembers a man

Waiting outside the theater each night,

Collecting popcorn buckets

To recreate some sort of chaos.

 Oklahoma is a state always in the red, dirt,

Confused about growth.

Guthrie is a town of Free Mason’s and Methodists

Eager to love you, show you, fuck you

Atop the wellhouse while

Grandpa sleeps in his recliner

And a newly planted honeysuckle

Patiently sucks at your writhing feet.

 Fragments of places like this are

Quiet, brick, building more though they are failing,

Eagerly awaiting America

And not seeing themselves mad,