Queer Appalachia

Take me to the holler.

I want to see the cows

Big Mamaw’s grave and

something about tobacco fields.

I don’t recall all you said at Barley’s, but you

introduced yourself with an anecdote

about toothbrushes made from

chewed-up willow branches and

coyotes loping along a

wooded backyard—Uncle Clark’s

and Aunt Zella’s. Big Mamaw called you

Little Tweeter and threw

pollywogs in the air.

Did you know

in academia, everyone’s talking

about queer Appalachia?

And “statistically unlikely” is your best angle.

You tug on all-purpose bootstraps

under the table, ready to dazzle

me with the story. I was baptized

Earl. Take me to the holler.

It just so happens that night you dragged an opossum

out of the road. Not quite dead—in a poem

I wrote that its life “teetered on the cusp

of the longest, bluest hour.” I was knee-deep

in Maggie Nelson, contemporary queen of the queers.

Queen of blue

I told you. Who?

OK, take me to the Cumberland River

where the cows pose and the ghost of Big Mamaw croons.

Did you know

Judith Butler is actually very attractive?

Who is   Judith Butler? You haul a kayak

over your rippling bulk of a shoulder and

set us going down the river.

Kudzu vines dip beneath the tree line like ropes.

Southern gothic.

The river ends in a pool of long, thin men.

Wading.

Their ponytails whip

out of the water and we dock. I hadn’t noticed

the weather is hot.

Even the buzzards stop and reconsider.

And the current

carries a fleet of crinkled beer cans

toward us. Did they see

you kiss me?

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a real gun in my life.

How fast can I load a boat?

I ask myself while you take us out,

you rush to take us out—to

take my dumb ass out of the holler.