A. J. Huffman’s poetry, fiction, haiku, and photography have appeared in hundreds of national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, and Offerta Speciale, in which her work appeared in both English and Italian translation.
On an Asphalt Carousel
I spin like a horse without reins.
Head inclined, my mind melts
like fresh tar, drenches the floor
in a floodlight of weariness.
My legs scream blind exhaustion
from a forgotten memory of running
without shoes or feet. My body flashes
in camera-quick blinks of delumination.
My ears, frantic to erase the echo
of footprints, the static noise of a million boys,
falling in line to mount me, collapse inside themselves,
bear scars as witness to nothing my body claims to feel.
I turn my black eyes inward,
focus on the conceptual force of circulation,
desperate to believe. I am first.
I will last. The in between
will pass in fuzzy fury, forgettable as any other
dream.
~
from Jellyfish this Illustration
of independence. These free-
floating,
aquatic hobos epitomize lack
of definition, lack
of confinement,
lack of interest in conventional
ly travelled
pathways.
Instead, they wander
the waves,
turning &
diving
on mere
whim.
~
Camelopardalis
Spots of skin call attention
to elongated neck, desire
to graze trees that that cannot live
without atmosphere. Herbivorous tendencies
manifest themselves as mournful echo
of midnight. I am faux Narcissus,
staring at such a familiar reflection.
It is not mine. I am not its. We are not even
in the same hemisphere of reality,
yet my legs walk
on grassless skies, my mouth opens in mock
consumption of nothing. We exist in simultaneous
stasis, destined to disappear
every dawn.