cwpoetrycircle:

February 22nd, 2017

Amorak Huey, former newspaper editor and reporter, authored the poetry collection Ha Ha Ha Thump (Sundress, 2015) and chapbooks The Insomniac Circus (Hyacinth Girl, 2014) and A Map of the Farm Three Miles from the End of Happy Hollow Road (Porkbelly, 2016). He teaches writing at Grand Valley State University.

It Occurred to Me Today That I Will Probably Die in Michigan

Maybe on a dune overlooking a lake.
Maybe during a snowstorm in a pothole
between innings of a Tigers game
on the front lawn of a Dutch Reform church
during the Cherry Festival, surrounded
by tulips. In this state we are never
more than six miles from freshwater.
In this state we are not fit to judge
the motives of our neighbors
but we speak with great authority
on the nature of pleasantness,
well-made furniture, skinned animals.
There’s blood under the pinestraw
of our history, bullet holes
in the city limits signs,
we created more perfect unions
then we laid everyone off.
My life here is my life here.
My parents met an hour from where
I sleep next to my wife or stay up too late
to watch Criminal Minds, the same choice
every night, or at least the same illusion
of the same choice. Narrative
is a kind of cage as state lines
are convenient truth, plot hole,
invasive species. It’s snowing again
and we’re all complaining. Every hour
starts with a victim, ends with a rescue,
the opposite of all our lives.

     – Amorak Huey