Sunny Side Down by AJ Huffman

My mind takes orders like a truck stop waitress
at 2 a.m.  The commands congeal, drip,
saturate
 themselves beyond recognition.
They cower in corners screaming obscenities
in a not-quite-foreign-enough
tongue.  Tantrums
of frustration desire exhaustion drowning
in the same bowl.  Colored bullshit
labels trying to lipstick animals that will bite
even under dawn’s de-fanging glare.

*****

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) 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 2200 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