Imparting tiny grains of colored sand with intricate thoughts
One giant flower covering the ground. It was so beautiful
I wanted take it home with me.
After it was done, he smeared great swaths of color against itself until
It was nothing but white sand.
It should have changed my life. I should have taken it away with me
Let his day disappear in the pursuit of beauty, but just the beauty of the moment.
I fully intended to go home and erase everything I had ever written
With the artist’s apparent satisfaction at the act of creation
Should be enough for me, too.
– Holly Day…
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Believe me,
nobody wants to be loved.
What good lies
in the isolated knowledge of one
who loves,
one who finds himself in love?
What good is it to me that you
love me?
The truth is irrelevant when it
comes to individuals.
What a useless thing—to be loved.
But to feel it, ah!
All souls, all spheres
of energy and matter
were created to seek it.
We bathe ourselves in the
hope to find it:
The feeling,
not the truth behind it.
For what is a color
other than the thing we see?
No reality can go beyond a belief,
becoming inconsequential.
Maybe they don’t know it,
maybe they can’t understand,
yet nobody really wants to be loved,
what they want is to feel as if they were.…
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Waves leave me stranded
My body recalls the pull
of salty siren
I echo remorse
My shell an amplifier
of solitude
The sun rises
My body warms to resolve
accepts stasis
Hours tick like time bombs
Metronomic visions
of feet and feathers
Owning neither
I sink further into sand
pretend I am coffin
Waiting for death
I discover a new concept
Regeneration
The world moved forward
into perceived reversal
I am recycled
Arms of tomorrow
embrace me like yesterday
I breath as if I am home.
– A.J. Huffman…
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Near the bridge, one leaves Jack’s Java.
Three blocks down, on the opposite side of Main, another exits Alma Books.
The two approach each other under a patchy sky, where blue tears whole swaths of winter from March. They notice: black hair wind-raised in a question mark, sunlight winking off a silver buckle, brown blazer, turned gaze, one’s loose gait, another’s briskness.
Passing cars interrupt the observations. Storefront windows darkly double them.
They appreciate. They dwell. There is much to like.
This could be fate.
One wants to stage an encounter, pretend a sudden street crossing is part of the afternoon’s agenda. But then what? How to bring about more than a nod, hello, and backward glance?
The other wonders the same, rapidly weighs which possession (phone, book, gloves) can suffer a timely plunge to the sidewalk and warrant a halt, exchange, closer inspection.…
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My mind imagines, bleeds
ink for almost-profit in shades
of depravity most could not even begin
to conceive. I sleep
with scissors beneath my pillow
for sanity, sit with my back against walls,
always keep doors in view. I walk
my dogs, carry a Maglite
that has not worked in years
as a weapon, ready to strike at shadows.
I am a product of my own darkness.
The boogiemen whispering from closets
and corners wear nametags I gave them,
wait for dialogues I have yet to write.
– A.J. Huffman…
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I believe you will turn toward me in the morning,
powered by an almighty need
to confirm I am still on this earth,
that what is seen and unseen still lives between us.
This is one thing I must have
the only thing that can trigger the day
that is begotten of our agreement.
You are the sun god of us,
the truth that turns the orbit
of being loved on this earth for me.
Through this love, I feel the warm rays of a brighter
salvation from afar,
come down from heaven,
by the power of you, through you,
incarnate in your arranging the blanket so my shoulders
are made warm.
For my sake, you brushed away the debts I owe you,
you suffered, but didn’t bury the pain of all those slights and insensitivities.…
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LG 1967–2013
when I brought you into my country
everywhere I had gone became
the town or river of a child and
you renamed it to your own music
and you were singing even though I
had broken into the refrain and
would do so again on leaving the
one mild country of your tune and words
I could hear the music of the child
you used to be when we talked in June
and knew nothing would interrupt it
in your time or out not even this
– Rodney Nelson…
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