Three Poems by A.J. Huffman

The Anole

snuggled closer to the security lamp,

wrapping itself around generated false

heat.  The night was damp, hazy,

and the tiny creature’s color had paled to match

bulb’s sallow glow.  A distant door slammed,

sent it scattering.  I watched the borrowed translucence

of exquisite ghostly version of itself fade

back into something more appropriately pedestrian,

a muddled brown, to scamper across the mud.

Total Eclipse of the Sun

Shadows moved in, lay claim

to gleam of lake. The perfect white

of trees, clouded gray to calm

the skyline.  Crystals

are sent skipping like glittering stones

out among another

bottomless night.

A Frog Croaked

needlessly on my shoe, a victim

of fear-induced self-murder.  Three

days earlier, it frantically leapt

into the garage, attempting to escape

the puppy sent scampering behind

my legs.  I was not quick

enough to block the mistaken path.

Disoriented, it hid behind levels

of totes, mountainous blue building

blocks of false security.  I knew it would

not survive the suffocating heat,

windowless Floridian summer.  Confined

and confused it did not show

itself for me to help.  I found it

belly up at 5 a.m., inches from the closed

door.  Upended, I assume, by the last-

minute mad attempt for

freedom.  Failed, valiantly.

I buried the tiny body next to a hibiscus

bloom, an appropriate resting spot.

I thought.

A.J. Huffman has published eleven solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses.  Her new poetry collection, Another Blood Jet, is not available from Eldritch Press.  She has two more poetry collections forthcoming:  A Few Bullets Short of Home, from mgv2>publishing and Degeneration, from Pink. Girl. Ink.  She is a Multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, and has published over 2100 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