Ramshackle Review

Amorak Huey:

Three Poems

STICK FIGURES IN LOVE

Lying naked on this bed in the cold sunshine of afternoon is the closest we come to honesty. Don’t even ask about the sex. All angles & awkward juxtapose. The slow end of the day, the bitter-chalk taste of hardboiled yolk. We feast on made-up memories, we never say what we mean. Seen from above, our shadows would resemble dancers: swell & spin & rise & thaw & somehow, somehow beautiful.




THIS POEM IS TOTALLY ABOUT WALLPAPER AND NOT AT ALL ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE, LIKE BREASTS

First thing you learn as a grown-up is no one likes wallpaper someone else picked out. I know something about thistles, too, and no one wants to see your leftover thistles on the walls of their sunny-ass happy-ever-after kitchens. Not even if you include the Latin names. Not even in pretty fruit-gum stripes. I could tell you about her breasts. Other body parts, too. You don’t want to hear it. When a guy’s alone in a hotel room longing for contact, it doesn’t matter how good a quarterback he used to be, he’s just another jerk with his cock in his hand. I can’t help it, you should see these thistles. They’re ridiculous. I know you don’t believe me.



YOUR MARRIAGE GETS LOUDER AS YOU GET OLDER

Everything begins as whisper, tiptoe, feather in night air: predator you never hear dropping from sky. Then faint clatter of dishes in faraway kitchen, hush of half-muted crime drama. Soap opera, self-contained narrative. Argument between neighbors, voices rising from behind locked doors on a block where such things are frowned upon. Traffic from two streets over. Distant train whistles. The rising siren of someone else’s trauma. The muffled bang: perhaps gunshot, perhaps backfire. Safe, still, to ignore. To pretend away. To slip between the folds of your own dreams like a roommate’s alarm clock. Things change without your paying attention. One week the construction site is a mile away, then four blocks, then trucks are backing down your driveway. That baby crying is in your arms. The life-flight helicopter is landing in your front yard. The roaring is in your ears, your skin, your heart. It is the sound of a drowning ocean. It is what you have been waiting for.




After 15 years as a reporter and editor, Amorak Huey recently left the newspaper business to teach writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. He is managing editor of the new online journal Wake: Great Lakes Thought & Culture. His poetry has appeared recently in Los Angeles Review, Contrary, Rattle, Gargoyle, and other journals. More information can be found at his website.