I Am Pretty Sure My Neighbor Has Taken a Lover
Amorak Huey
Woman on Log Bench
Megan Merchant
I envy —
not the sex (not only the sex)
but the secret that fuels the sex.
The sharedness of it, the two of them
alone in their knowing
what it is to lay this singular specific body
atop this one other body. How common
the thirst, how specific
the slaking. My neighbor parks on the street,
leaves the garage open,
the lover pulls in, the door closes its mouth behind them
as I recall how you and I
started like that: lips open, breaking
a promise made to someone else,
fairy tale protagonists
lost in the dark wet woods
long before anyone knew
we were gone.
Amorak Huey is author of four books of poems including Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress, 2021). Co-founder with Han VanderHart of River River Books, Huey teaches at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. He also is co-author with W. Todd Kaneko of the textbook Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2024).
Megan Merchant is the owner of www.shiversong.com and holds an M.F.A. degree in International Creative Writing from UNLV. She is the author of three full-length collections with Glass Lyre Press, four chapbooks, and a children’s book, These Words I Shaped for You (Penguin Random House). Her book, Before the Fevered Snow, was released in April 2020 with Stillhouse Press (NYT New & Noteworthy). She was awarded the 2016-2017 COG Literary Award, the 2018 Beullah Rose Poetry Prize, the Inaugural Michelle Boisseau Prize and most recently the New American Poetry Prize. She is the Editor of Pirene’s Fountain. You can find her poems and artwork at meganmerchant.wix.com/poet.