Two Poems by Sarah Russell

Moving On

We had run out of words.
He paid the check,
anxious to leave.
"Thanks for lunch," I said.

"Yeah.  Sure.  I'll pick him up
at five for the weekend, OK?
Glad we could talk.  Glad
you understand."

"Jamie says he likes her,"
I said.  "Happy for you."
His cellphone rang, and he mimed
he had to take it as he walked away.
I sat staring at the crumbs we'd left,
my empty glass.



Reclaiming True

After four years of I love you's
he said he'd never leave her.

I told him to get out.

Then I double-checked the sell-by date
on milk I bought that morning;

took off my shoe, compared the size inside
to what was on the box;

checked outside when the weather guy
said 65 and cloudy;

pinched my arm hard, relished
the red/purple welt.



Sarah Russell is the poetry editor for Voices and co-edits Pastiche, a local literary journal.  Her poetry is forthcoming or has appeared in Red River Review, Misfit Magazine, The Houseboat, and Poppy Road Review, among others.  Follow her work at www.SarahRussellPoetry.com

Two Poems by A.J. Huffman

With Acerbity

I swallow the memories of our time

together, choking on the chunks,

the happiness, random and coated,

overly sweet.  Clear away the last residual

tastes of doubt, could-be’s and what-if’s,

with a final dramatic inhale.  Cleansed,

my vocabularic palette shines, rejuvenated

by the melodic explosion of conjoined syllables,

repressed far too long.  Released,

the echo encompasses my body, reminds

of the power of oration.  The enchanted tone

of regeneration smiles through

the proper enunciations of goodbye.

I Remember

the way you looked when you said

you didn’t love me.  When you said

you tried, but . . . I tuned out the rest,

having heard all its variations in the past,

focused instead on the shape of your mouth.

I recognized its shape, a record player’s,

broken, your tongue a needle, skipping and

scratching the same scar deeper into my heart.

A.J. Huffman has published eleven 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), and Butchery of the Innocent (Scars Publications) are now available from their respective publishers.  She has two additional poetry collections forthcoming:  Degeneration (Pink Girl Ink) and A Bizarre Burning of Bees (Transcendent Zero Press).  She is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a two-time Best of Net nominee, and has published over 2300 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.