Because Futility by A.J. Huffman

seems to wear me like a worn-out bathrobe,

I swallow the frustrated bile that rises

daily.  Chunks of broken

                                         dreams forced

                                                                  down

in duty to family, friends.  Reality

ticks by, a slow-moving bus I am destined to be

under.  I lay in my graveled bed, waiting

for resignation or residual fumes from the tailpipe,

whichever come to claim me first.

A.J. Huffman has published seven solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses.  She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and the winner of the 2012 Promise of Light Haiku Contest.  Her poetry, fiction, and haiku have appeared in hundreds of national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, Kritya, and Offerta Speciale, in which her work appeared in both English and Italian translation.  She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press.  www.kindofahurricanepress.com