Checked Mates by A. J. Huffman

Chess, by Vladamir Kush.

Checked Mates
 
Twin shadows of two horses’
asses battle under the watchful eyes
of a blind clock.  White and black
bleed red hours of futility,
defend helpless royalty for the pleasure
of anonymous hands.  Death
comes with a title:  knight.  Appropriate
connotations of darkness linger
as the lie echoes like an empty hourglass:
all casualties are pawns, broken
pieces, littering the floor of a palace
known as Boredom.

A.J. Huffman

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), Butchery of the Innocent (Scars Publications) and Degeneration (Pink Girl Ink) are now available from their respective publishers and amazon.com.  She has an additional poetry collection forthcoming:  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.