“Tragedy,” by A.J. Huffman

Dec 20th, 2015 | By | Category: Poetry

Vexing fact of reality, fateless truth:
flea markets do not sell fleas.

The label evokes strange images of miniature
carnival barkers in top hats and elaborate costumes
presiding over an auction-like scenario. A line
of festering mites paraded about in rags and shackles,
responding to crack of tamer’s whip. One by one,
brought forth before arena full of cats, dogs,
domesticated creatures of all kinds who should have known
better, but bid on these back-biters in spite. Eagerly
trading valuable toys and collars for savage
motes, bringing them back to their owners. Retribution
for some human oversight.

Instead of this encompassing fantastical sideshow,
we find unclothed tables erupting with trinkets, baubles
in various stages of decay, disarray. Books
with missing pages, torn covers, match wits with antique
stemware, glasses laced with germs of myriad mouths.
Fueled by the driving belief that somewhere amidst the rubble,
the mess, lies treasure, buried, forgotten, we proceed
to forage, ferreting with ever-lessening hope of finding
or being found.

————

Defenestration-A.J. HuffmanA.J. Huffman has published eleven solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses. Her new poetry collections, Another Blood Jet (Eldritch Press) and A Few Bullets Short of Home (mgv2>publishing) are now available from their respective publishers. She has two additional poetry collections forthcoming: Degeneration from Pink Girl Ink, and A Bizarre Burning of Bees from Transcendent Zero Press. She is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and has published over 2,200 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.

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