Townies

God blows through this town like dust. Makes the sunsets worth writing about but the trees die of it, leaves going bacon-brown, bark peeling. People are starting to whisper behind their menus at the diners, this being the kind of town with diners, with churches, with the library closed on Sundays and Tuesdays now, with churches, churches, taverns, diners, empty lots. The high school burned, they’re teaching in tents now. Sure, yeah, we’re all going to die, that’s always been true but it’s getting harder for certain people to pretend it away. I have such judgy thoughts about your so-called salvation but I’ve never had permission to share them aloud. Learned that lesson early when a girl broke up with me because of what I was thinking about God even though I hadn’t told her. Now I see her around town, head down in the wind, like all of us, braced against the choking clouds. It’s dumb because we were so young, yet still here I am, thinking about the lives we missed out on, how they did not happen, will never have happened, and if that’s what you mean by Heaven, the chance to taste all we’ve missed, okay fine, I’ll buy, but I don’t think that’s what you mean.

AMORAK HUEY

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