Poetry by Amorak Huey

Tomas Soldan CC



​
Can Take the Boy out of the South, Etc.

it does not surprise me that sometimes when I say I miss you 
you hear honeysuckle

you hear Happy Hollow Road 
you hear the Cahaba  

and its million years 
of wearing rocks into smooth fists

you hear summer storm on tarpaper roof
highway traffic beyond Gillespie’s pasture

kudzu swallowing back fence in spring
red dirt and pine straw

all these distant seasons I bring you
like a botanist transporting an invasive species to a new continent 

we plant what we want
have so little say in how it grows

​

Amorak Huey is author of five books of poems including Mouth, out from Cornerstone Press in 2026. Co-founder with Han VanderHart of River River Books, Huey teaches at Bowling Green State University. He is co-author with W. Todd Kaneko of the textbook Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2024).



​
Anti-Heroin Chic is a sponsored project of Indolent Arts, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit fiscal sponsor. Please consider making a one-time tax-deductible donation.

donate