At McDonald’s franchise #3135,
according to the sales receipt,
my aunt and I stop for a coke.

We are in Red Bud, Illinois,
according to the receipt,
and it is on July 23 at 3:17p.m.
that we each purchase
12oz. of diet.

We’re down here to visit the grave
of my great-great-grandfather
who arrived here from Austria in 1850,
leaving Europe in a mess.

He married a woman he met on the boat
and they walked around in a dream, speaking German
on the all-natural bosom of the New World.

Europe would have to get along without them.

With his horse and plow
he was a dust cloud in their farmhouse window.
She loved to stand there and stare
at the nineteenth century, not far
from what one day

would become franchise #3135,
where behind the counter
a kid named Dale,
with acne and personal issues,
dreams of leaving Red Bud.