Elegy for a White Linen Jacket With the Sleeves Shoved Up
Amorak Huey



We are all smugglers in this decade--
chasing suitcases of money
to rid ourselves of weightier baggage.

Every once in a while something happens that changes
the way the world sees color--

everything that came before so humdrum, so lacking in neon.

I am fifteen and this jacket is from a thrift store
and it is three years too late
but I don’t care--

the challenge was always going to be keeping the heroes
as cool as the bad guys,
 
but it seems there’s a formula for our desire to be wanted,

it’s no more complicated than removing red from the palette
and turning up the volume on the music.
The violence was fake,
the mysteries easy to solve,

but the hunger—the hunger was always real.


Why Previews Are Better Than Movies



Potential is always better than execution. We’re all really more big idea people. As a species, I mean. Details are for suckers. I would be a fantastic inventor if I never had to make anything. I would also love to climb mountains, if not for the heights. I worked for an architect in college, driving blueprints from one office to another and having lunch with grown-ups. The firm never built anything new, just added on to existing structures, and consider what that teaches us about narrative. There was a hotel once, and a museum. One wing of a museum, anyway. The firm had to design a space to accommodate traveling exhibitions such as the artifacts of Catherine the Great, and it’s not as easy as you’d think to create a room that no one’s supposed to notice—a room that stays out of the way of the art. They say she had sex with a horse, but if you ask me it’s probably just something she talked about but never got around to.

About the author:
Amorak Huey is author of the poetry collection Ha Ha Ha Thump (Sundress, 2015) and the chapbook The Insomniac Circus (Hyacinth Girl, 2014). His writing appears in The Best American Poetry 2012, The Southern Review, Essay Daily, Cartridge Lit, Poet Lore, Menacing Hedge, and many other journals. He teaches writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. Follow him on Twitter: @amorak.