— according to something I read on the internet

Last week poetry was $3.09 at the Circle K near my house and $3.11 at the Marathon across the street from the Circle K. Plus nine-tenths of a penny, obviously. Poetry is almost always a few cents more at the Marathon, but sometimes I’d rather not make the left turn on my way out, so I pay the extra. Some days are like that, more than one way to where you’re going, but regardless of your path you need a full tank of poems. I don’t know. I could start talking about fossil fuels and how we always burn what we need most, but you know how that would go. I’m just trying to get from here to there. This week poetry is down to $2.99 both places. Still with the nine-tenths. Always with the nine-tenths. Which is the part of the law represented by possession, they suggest. Which is to say this poem is nine-tenths of the way to being yours, with the final tenth of the process being determined by the rest of the laws, the ones written—like poems—out of language and granted meaning by our need to have shared words for how we interact with each other. This is why most people keep their poems buried in tanks under parking lots. I read that if you put 250 baboons on a cross-country flight they would all pretty much kill each other by the time the plane touched down in Los Angeles. Or wherever.

Amorak Huey is author of four books of poems including Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications, 2021). Co-founder with Han VanderHart of River River Books, Huey teaches at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.