God, the Father

 
 
 

Loving but bumbling. Intensely competent but emotionally distant. These are the choices. With which father would you rather go hunting? The one more likely to shoot you comically with an arrow? Or the one more likely to leave you behind for the wolves? Either way, they’re coming home empty-handed. Either way, you’ll have stories for your therapist & motivation for all of your life’s great achievements. Either way, you’ll want to follow the marked path. Stay near the trail. Wear layers. Carry a knife. Faith is always misplaced, this is the nature of faith. It seems easier to stay inside, warm by the fire, but the season turns, the children grow hungry, someone must hunt.

 
 
 

Amorak Huey, a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in poetry, is author of the poetry collection Ha Ha Ha Thump (Sundress, 2015) and the chapbooks The Insomniac Circus (Hyacinth Girl, 2014) and A Map of the Farm Three Miles from the End of Happy Hollow Road (Porkbelly, 2016). He is also co-author with W. Todd Kaneko of the forthcoming textbook Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Boomsbury, 2018) and teaches writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan.