Three Poems by A.J. Huffman

Because Dreams

are as distant as stars, I comb the sky

nightly, looking for mental residue,

a collision’s path

                            I can follow through

the darkness.  I am blinking, blindly,

waiting to be

                       or be claimed as

a beacon, or at least something bright enough

to be charted as pointing, maybe even leading,

to some applaudable space.

I Am Breath

of moonbeam, child of starlight and empty

space.  I am momentum, suspended. 

Free-floating without gravity, I am uncharted

territory, waiting to be discovered.  One alien

touch, and I am scarred, imprinted by uninvited

trespassers, claiming I am their own.  Non-conducive

to cohabitation, I refuse co-dependence, eject

sycophantic leeches, launch them into the stratosphere.

Their trajectory echoes a mantra inside my mind:
One small step for man, one wrong move toward my kind.

Midnight’s Frosting

Twelve bells toll without hope

of eyes closing.  My mind

turns cold shoulders toward sanity,

begins to wonder . . .

If I dreamed of nothing

but snow, would I freeze

to death in my sleep?

A.J. Huffman has published eleven 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), and Butchery of the Innocent (Scars Publications) are now available from their respective publishers.  She has two additional poetry collections forthcoming:  Degeneration (Pink Girl Ink) and A Bizarre Burning of Bees (Transcendent Zero Press).  She is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a two-time Best of Net nominee, and has published over 2300 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.