American Highway

We’re driving. There are no trees. We’re driving

through a desert that used to be a park,

used to be lake, swamp, hiding place. 

We’re on the run. It’s a movie.

We turn up the music to drown out

the sun-ravaged landscape. It does not work.

We try a new song. The wind picks up,

a hot wind under a white, white sun.

Tumbleweeds race us, win. So much

whiteness. Under us asphalt melts, soup

of burning tar & human regret. We are 

burning now. Driving. Burning. It’s too late. 

We understand at last what this is:

one of those movies where we both die

at the end, which is all movies.

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Amorak Huey is the author of Mouth, forthcoming in 2026 from Cornerstone Press, and four previous collections of poetry. Co-founder with Han VanderHart of River River Books, Huey directs the creative writing program at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.