A.J. Huffman

3 Stages Past Basic

Seeing Dolphins

dancing beyond the shore, I regret
my landlocked life, drown in desire
to ride waves like wind, to speak
in chittering tones only my own
kind can understand, to keep pace
with seagulls flying over my head.
I wish on the last star as it fades into morning,
wait for fins and gills to blossom from pallid
skin, mourn all the more when they do not.

Because Flying

monkeys took my ruby slippers,
I cannot sleep with both my eyes closed.
They were my secret escape, my compass,
always pointing home, my land-
marks in the desert of a jaded reality, green
as the sky in the city that haunts my dreams.
Now I am condemned to lie here in the half-
dark shadows of an empty room. The corners
are singing some mocking tune about candy
kids, while I am trying to focus on the distant
dripping of a faucet, imagine it
washing me away.

I Am Bedpost

Stoic sentinel, I am the frame
supporting your sexual proclivities.
My form was constructed to endure
years of over-aggressive thrusting.
I can take your frustration, rage, desperate
desire. I am cold
steel beneath your grip.
I am not bending or breaking,
just waiting for inevitable
exhaustion to calm you into coma
and give me almost eight
hours of peace.

© A.J. Huffman 2013

A.J. Huffman has published six solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and the winner of the 2012 Promise of Light Haiku Contest. Her poetry, fiction, and haiku have appeared in hundreds of national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, Kritya, and Offerta Speciale, in which her work appeared in both English and Italian translation. She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press. www.kindofahurricanepress.com