mmmdcccvi

Stuck on Oklahoma

this one’s easy, or
should be, i’m a
familiar. like,
hang on, i know
this one. the tulsa
dispenser doesn’t
automatically send
a padgett or a brain
ard through the wilds
of kansas and ohio into
new york city, but when
it does, i feel you ron, i
feel you joe, as back to
your respective families
you go come christmas
or hopefully not the 4th
of july. but unless you’re
hooking bass on a boat
somewhere mid-tenkiller,
arkansas is prettier. or at
least the river valley ’tween
the ozarks and the ouachitas.
so maybe we’re even, a quad
rant for a quadrant, let’s say?
even as the derricks send a
storm of dirt out into an
early dusk that’s some
how arid and oily at
the same time—it’s
not a haven for teen
agers. hey, you poets
of ponca city, let’s
put the world on
hold, just for a
little bit longer,
what say you?
first we’ll head
to tulsa, five
years pre
mature,
meet ted
at the uni
versity. or
that was the
plan, wasn’t it?
hey guys, come
on down to fort
smith, won’t ya?
is just what i said
half a decade before
being born. i’m
just standing here
stuck in a big pile
of manure waiting
for youth to catch
up with me. but
nobody heard me.
when tulsa finally
arrived it was
through the
windshield of
papaw’s second-
hand cherokee
pick-up (which
was white but
for a maroon
stripe, or vice

versa, i cannot

be certain). but
when i emerged
from that jeep
it was too late.
sadness so perm
eated the trek on I-40
from alma and across
the border, and on
and on until well
after we took that
right turn up through
muskogee, that i blew
out my very own trail
of tears. because at that
age i was nothing but
an angsty greenhorn
with nothing better to
do but brood over my
own stupid self. yet i
claim to be a late
bloomer? well, i
turned thirty in the
poetry section of the
library of none other
than the massachusetts
institute of technology,
where i caught up with
ron, joe, ted, and all of
the rest of the gang.
stepping every weekday
through the hallowed halls
of engineers, this here all
grown up queer. so, yes, ever
so slightly i grew into my boots,
got myself educated. it didn’t
take much else than that,
and maybe a half a dozen
or so group hugs by the best
linebackers and quarterbacks
in the word business. you get
squeezed by a poet and, well,
something irreversibly changes,
at least in me. though it’s no joke
that the biggest chunk of me is still
that podunk kiddo. this i say to you
sixty years after i was born five years
premature. and those, my friends, are
just a few of my made to order mem
ories of being a good neighbor. so,
as for me and my bookshelf full
of pals from oklahoma and the
ones from the universe with
which they hung, where else
to go with it but on such an
endless repeat (and i do not
mean hung from judge isaac’s
barrows, nope, that will not be,
for this story’s entirely too sweet.)
once again, loop it back and repeat.