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

 

 

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