...and a response from Tulsa

What I Did Last Summer

Pay no mind to the hundred-plus Oklahoma boilin your eyeballs ten minutes after the humid air plunges mine into lipton tea and other southern stereotypes. Pay no mind to the soft, coolin southern rain that comes from the sky like an angel and sleeps with your momma. Pay no mind to the naked ladies in the shower, daylilies, iris, and litter in the garden panting like lost souls, and brothers-in-law returning every summer whether you want ‘em or not.

Don't worry. She kept Her my on me. She kept the back forty in short supply of rye grass and cannabis pustules. She swept the floor with him and Jim and Rin-tin-tin. She house sat and apartment stood. She trimmed the heads off the flower power and flushed the lies right down the watermelon. She lurked. She flea.

I've been your racquet ball racketeer wildcattin with Prospector Frank in the kereoke sunsets. I've been the host of myriad hostess twinkies congregating on the shoulder and slapping their knees with consternation at Mr. Halversham's incessant medling cake, the cake two drunk girls dig into with beans and knives and forge new treaties with the Corn King. I've done all the assigned reeling. I've bar-b-qued queues and barbed transatlantic wires under fire in a brimstone storm. I've slathered lard upon Lars and wined and rhymed the bratwurst from hell if I know gordonzola from Heinz kestner.

We've fashioned a raprochement of pine mulch between Laura and Latham. We've fashioned a new boyfriend out of shinola and boner grease. We've dined on the Roots regaling us with sunshine up our butts; we've danced with the Dance Hall fireworks and mined formaldehyde muffintops; we've fried and frenchified down at the crick in her back; we've opined and oppossumed on half-patios at night Rolex watsons--el presidenteat Guero's--the South American kind, not the damned Swiss with their sissy hissy fits.

They've been hotter than a cow's tucchus at a Tulsa high school reunion, tipped and tipsy. They've followed us on their scooters and plagued us with piano playing Titus Andronicus Hall. They've bobbed and Dylaned him until he wet his Willie and put Sweet Kate in a half Nelson. They've complained that our beer was not dear, swearin like they was back at day concentration camp. I'm calebed and maxed out.