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Being Called a Faggot While Walking the Road to Clemson, South Carolina

By D. Gilson

The honeysuckle dew slick
& sweet this morning

& only an empty Wendy's cup
thrown to ditch

& the truck passing
(& it is almost always

a truck) slows just
to roll down

the window & O
I wish they could smell

this & O I wish
I could quit

them driving
so fast & missing

this honeysuckle, so dew-
sweet this morning.
Added: Tuesday, January 20, 2015  /  Gilson's poem is the Second Place Winner of the 2015 Split This Rock Annual Poetry Contest, generously adjudicated by Natalie Diaz.
D. Gilson

D. Gilson is the author of I Will Say This Exactly One Time: Essays (Sibling Rivalry, 2015); Crush (Punctum Books, 2014), with Will Stockton; Brit Lit (Sibling Rivalry, 2013); and Catch & Release (2012), winner of the Robin Becker Prize. He is Assistant Professor of English at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, and his work has appeared in PANK, The Indiana Review, The Rumpus, and as a notable essay in Best American Essays.

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