Three Poems by A.J. Huffman

Good God Mother

I am a straightjacket girl in a ballroom world.  I have

forgotten how to follow the glitter-

brick road.  Mirrors come to paint me.  It tickles.

I laugh and break.  Their concentration

requires definition – mine.  I look myself up

and down seems to be the only probability.  I jump

on one foot in the middle of a rainstorm

hoping to strike right.  Wrong! 

Everything runs.  Back

to basic training I go.

Of Coffee

grounds

               meet

water

brew

         energized

morning

breath

drip     pools

cup carries

caffeinated

gold

Reverberations.  In Blue.

I am a broken hollow

filled with my own echo.  I haunt

myself with abandoned

desires designed to trick me

                                              out as “normal.”

It never works.  I am immune to the sound

of my own voice (not to mention

my truly pathetic sales pitch).  Still

I practice repeating retreating

repenting (occasionally)

even reinventing . . . harmony

is the definition

                          [of so much more than]

                                                                horrifying.

A.J. Huffman has published twelve solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses.  Her new poetry collections, Another Blood Jet (Eldritch Press), A Few Bullets Short of Home (mgv2>publishing), Butchery of the Innocent (Scars Publications), Degeneration (Pink Girl Ink) and A Bizarre Burning of Bees (Transcendent Zero Press) are now available from their respective publishers and amazon.com.  She is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a two-time Best of Net nominee, and has published over 2400 poems in various national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, and Kritya.  She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press.  www.kindofahurricanepress.com.