Of Fucking and Fleeing
I do not need
the residual bullshit of whining
Will you call me’s,
nor do I believe in the transcendent
lies of I’ll call you tomorrow’s.
Mine is a nature that learns
from past catastrophes. Names
are irrelevant. Sex is my church.
I confess
I enjoy sinning, giving
myself to another in shadows,
but I am temporary, a tangible ghost,
naked. I disappear
with an unceremonious slam before dawn.
To Kill Or Not To Kill
hasn’t been the question in years.
Who to kill is the new front runner
in my rapidly growing list of opathies.
Homicidal and suicidal are
as interchangeable as hours on a clock,
days in a week. Bitterness is
the only pill I can stand to swallow.
It covers the taste of regret
staining my tongue. I am stuck
and solidly alone in the war I wage
in my mind. I have though about changing
my name to volcano, but that implies
some elemental hope of survival.
My fissure is wider. When I break, they will
call me Pompeii. Nothing
will be left to breathe beneath my ash.
Another New Heart
He snapped his fingers and pointed at me.
He spread his hands wide, indicating
he was available. I took
out my notebook and put it on the table,
decided to start with the last chapter.
He began to tell me a story, a minimal account
I had heard before. When he finished
telling it, I nodded, made a note—
not because it was important,
but because I was trying to keep myself
breathing. He never said another word,
just dissolved into a dream I had conquered
too many times before.
by AJ Huffman
A.J. Huffman has published eleven solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses. Her new poetry collection, Another Blood Jet, is now available from Eldritch Press. She has three more poetry collections forthcoming: A Few Bullets Short of Home from mgv2>publishing, Degeneration from Pink Girl Ink, and A Bizarre Burning of Bees from Transcendent Zero Press. She is a Multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, and has published over 2200 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
