(Note: For those of you who have enjoyed the past two days, we suggest you return for another by the same writer on Monday–The Eds.)
and when you pulled that guitar off the wall, what did you know of callousness or of evening hillsides soaked in shadows with silence buried beneath? we saw each other one time on honey earth, in neon buzz with September stars just hanging over our heads. I knew all the words just about and you did, too. blue light mornings and coffee. fractal breath. what will take root here in the body of your work? and I’m left just bluestem and duckweed, game trail and stillness. what is your name, gray sky? who is this in me again? this present moment is a cold stream poured over stone and mud. my reflection is all distorted and for a second, I am you and you are standing under the elm tree saying something I can’t hear. just take this time and space for yourself. it’s not bullshit to feel sad.
Eric Huff
Recognition
by the time it was over the rain had started in earnest. from the window I watched as the sky broke into pieces like a shattered mirror. the violence sudden and then just a moment where we recognize these empty spaces. you saw this in me, too, I think. we both were standing in the river again, just about up to our bare knees. I told you this is the only way I know how to heal myself because I didn’t want to admit to each time I’ve leaned over the guardrails just hoping to catch myself in the movement of that breath, one and then another. you were a shade tree, the name of which you didn’t know, didn’t need to know. you called spirit into that room. you held my breath as your dog pulled against its leash. with wide eyes you saw me. you saw me standing there waiting for the torrents of rain to stop, for it to ease up some.
Eric Huff
(image is of the poet)
Saragun Springs 
Eric
The conversational, stream of consciousness flow of your work creates a story. I like how it appears to begin in mid thought. Great stuff.
Leila
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As someone once said, I don’t know shit about poetry, but I do know what I like and I don’t like; I like Eric Huff’s work and its breathless imagery. Looking forward to Monday, Eric!
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Hi Eric
These pieces are urgent and wild and midwestern, and well-controlled, too, with a perfect beat in every line. That is probably one reason these remind me of the Beat writers, especially some of Kerouac’s poetry but also some of Ginsberg’s prose and Burrough’s prose poetry. And yet these pieces also have their own quite unique voice and they don’t sound like anyone else. Too much, far, far too much, poetry of today stays way too distant from itself. Many of these academic and professional poets know how to construct imagery and rhythm, but it feels DEAD, because they aren’t brave enough to put much of themselves into their work (it might offend their employers, who also don’t take risks). On the other hand, we have poets who place too much of their own pointless personal concerns into their work, and that doesn’t feel dead, it feels embarrassing and sad. You have achieved the poetic balance here. The middle way, where all good poetry belongs. Just enough but not too much, like riding a bicycle.
Dale
PS to All
As should always be repeated ad infinitum, good poetry catches the reader’s interest on a first couple of readings; but it deepens and improves and continues to become more and more itself for the reader only upon repeated readings; many readings; multiple readings; a myriad of readings; and even a mighty number of readings…As such, it is against the shallow, flitting attention spans of the modern world. Dear World, don’t let the algorithm control your brain, because that is also controlling your mind, heart, and spirit!
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Two strong prose poems, emotionally honest without being confessional. I like how they’re grounded in landscape. (Bluestem and duckweed, game trail and stillness.) The guardrail moment in Recognition is excellent.
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