Amorak Huey

ALL WEATHER WANTS TO BE SOME OTHER KIND OF WEATHER

A boy lies on top of his sheets in Alabama,

his skin glazed with sweat and wonder.

The late-summer air is soup, swamp,

tongue. The boy suspects he was kidnapped

as an infant. Suspects he does not belong,

here or anywhere, has no home to return to,

and if once he had some other name

it has long been forgotten. The darkness

is a promise. The quiet is a promise.

He opens his eyes. Closes them.

And for the rest of his life

he will pretend there was a time

when he was comfortable in his skin –

a season that was not about waiting

for the wind to change–

a moment unshaped by hunger.

36 MONTHS IN WASECA

Three years of noise, all bang, clatter and howl. Three years to realize you’ve spent a lifetime dreading the wrong things. The worst imaginable takes turns with nothing you can’t handle, same as all the other months. Tell everyone who listens you trusted the wrong person. This is the only possible mistake.

SO THIS IS WHAT WE’VE COME TO

We are seagulls walking in a mall parking lot.

Miles from water, we scrimp

and squabble over popcorn kernels.

We are consumers dropping crumbs.

We build candy houses,

indulge sweet teeth.

We rot. We begrudge. We lure

companions with our kisses.

We invent enemies.

We are orange cones,

blinking lights, warning signs.

We wait for the month to end,

we demand payment,

threaten, persuade, prizefight.

We square the circles,

slip the knots, unlock

the tiny clasps of a brassiere

with our teeth. We flesh,

feel, forge. We spread

and touch and tender.

We morph and metaphor.

We pluck and glance

and angle away. We storm

and long and appetite.

Someday we will learn again to fly –

the surface dropping away

beneath our dangling feet.

CP

Amorak Huey, a former newspaper editor and reporter, teaches writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. His chapbook, The Insomniac Circus, is from Hyacinth Girl Press, and his book, Ha Ha Ha Thump, is available from Sundress Publications. His poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry 2012, The Cincinnati Review, The Collagist, Quarterly West, Stirring, and many other journals. Follow him on Twitter: @amorak.