which direction are you from here
kidding I know it’s down

I would be a wretched river
so weary of waiting to be traveled to

my darling westward witch
my east my Eden my every

each of us one single individual water
amid all the many waters

nostalgic for spring & source  
before we bend around the first bend

(facing the audience) you know
how long this took us 

you think it’s easy to meander
for a thousand years 

in a ditch made by melting ice
(back to you) join me 

the rocks are slippery
the cold takes the breath

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Prompt: Write a poem whose syntax makes you slightly uncomfortable, a poem with an inconsistent but intentional relationship to the sentence, a poem without comma or period but maybe parentheses.

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Amorak Huey is the author of four books of poems including Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress, 2021). Huey teaches at Bowling Green State University in Ohio and is co-author with W. Todd Kaneko of the textbook Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2024).