Little Miss Helpful
A.J. Huffman


I was five when my father put a wrench in my hand.
We were home alone, and he was working
on the family car.  It never occurred to him that I had
been paying attention, that I knew what this strange tool
was used for.  An hour later, finished with whatever 
had needed fixing, he asked me for the wrench I was still 
playing with.  I laid it in his hand, along with the dozen 
or so bolts I had found and removed during the course of his inattention.  
Furious, he spent the next three hours finding and replacing the pieces
I had detached.  Mom was even madder.  She never did get 
all that grease out of my pink fur coat.

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About the author:
A.J. Huffman has published nine solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her poetry, fiction, and haiku have appeared in hundreds of national and international journals. She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press.