Sonnet with Simile

Jane Huffman

I knew straight away,
like a rabbit darting across traffic
knows the extent of its quickness.

I had wanted to emerge without
emerging. A private debut,
no needling.

What happened, of course,
was threefold, like a Chekhovian
drama. First, I gave in

as some might give birth. Then,
I made the decision. Last, I stayed,
which had the staying power

of an image, a hook-handed man.
A rifle in the umbrella stand.


Jane Huffman is a third-year fellow at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she completed her MFA in poetry in 2017. Her recent poems and essays have been published or are forthcoming in Hobart, phoebe, Ninth Letter, New South, Third Coast, Witness and elsewhere. She is co-founder/editor-in-chief of Guesthouse, a new literary journal.

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