Honky Tonks by Chuck Sweetman

“Close up the honky tonks, throw away the key
Then maybe the one I love will come back to me.”
—Dwight Yoakam

The motion before this council is whether
to “Close up the Honky Tonks”
and furthermore “throw away the key.”
—“As long as there’s a honky tonk,” claims
the petitioner, “she’ll never settle down.”
However practical, valid, even obvious 
this notion must have seemed to one
dancing with a memory in the kitchen,  
listening for returning tires in the driveway, 
the Greater Honky Tonk Association
warns against social costs of such closings 
in their Powerpoint presentation titled
“Two Doors Down There’s a Jukebox”
featuring signs of neon martinis, 
bucking broncos, and dancing couples. 
It begins with praise for the two-step
as heart-ache therapy, especially for those 
working “for days and nights on end 
just to walk and talk again.”
Testimonials like, “The only time I feel the pain 
is in the sunshine and the rain,” overheard 
by bartenders and sung in stalls, suggest
the desire for lyrical graffiti in its many voice-
breaking forms, “Girl you taught me how    
to hurt real bad and cry myself to sleep.”
And the Association closes its case 
for honky tonks—for all those places of music
that bring us together—with a section called
“Requests,” including this one: preserved by a DJ,
scraped into a whiskey-stained bar napkin across 
Rodeo Bar and Grill’s emblem: “Hey, Mister,
Turn it On, Turn It Up, Turn Me Loose!

Chuck Sweetman is a senior editor for december Magazine. His essays, stories, reviews, and poems have appeared in such places as Verse Daily, Brilliant Corners, River Styx, Revel, Poet Lore, Black Warrior Review, and Notre Dame Review. In addition to chapbooks, he is the author of a book of poems Enterprise, Inc. (2008)