Two Poems by A.J. Huffman

Cowboy Karaoke

wafts through the air just before midnight,

as my neighbor who is obviously well

past sober decides to ring in the New Year

as Garth Brooks, and I shake

my head in exasperation, hurry the dogs

into the house before they decide to howl

along with the next drunken refrain.

I know I am finally getting old,

a wine cooler and a few hours

of this generation’s Dick Clark

are my preferred partners for watching

the ball drop this year.  Maybe I will

make a resolution to go out next year,

but I doubt it.  My 4 a.m. homeward stumbles

and taxi-cabbed cookie tosses ended

years ago, and I realize I am glad

as the chime tolls a close on a dead year, and I

tuck myself into my comforter,

getting a head start on my decided promise

that this year I will get more

sleep.

I Wrote a Poem at Midnight

this New Year’s Eve because I am superstitious

and I do not want to temp the fates that prophecy

what you are doing at midnight is what you will be

doing all year.  Friends and family laugh, kiss

and clink drinks around me as I scribble. 

The idea of a year without ink more terrifying

than an after-midnight car crash, and I am relieved

when the last stanza stands as scar

against the stark white of the page. 

The muse of this past year has followed me

through the twelve welcoming chimes of the new.

A.J. Huffman has published twelve solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses.  Her new poetry collections, Another Blood Jet (Eldritch Press), A Few Bullets Short of Home (mgv2>publishing), Butchery of the Innocent (Scars Publications), Degeneration (Pink Girl Ink) and A Bizarre Burning of Bees (Transcendent Zero Press) are now available from their respective publishers and amazon.com.  She is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a two-time Best of Net nominee, and has published over 2400 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.