Resolution One

They all laughed when I stood up to tell a joke. Were they ever surprised. I won't release you to your ladder, gravity, until you wish me well. If you get up an hour earlier you may save money by not lighting candles later. On my color keyboard violet is one half step from red. If consciousness is an emergent property my astral body's stymied by high voltage because it's a grid. Therefore let's astrally project again just like last summer, i.e., badly. My imaginary interlocutor is hard of hearing and recalcitrant. If bribery won't work I might just try extortion. It would be a shame if something were to happen to utopia. There are more particles of dark than meet the eye. Simultaneity is fleeting sympathetically. They are invisible until they interact. Put nature and the vacuum in a room together. Let them sort their differences, as damned spots, out.

Heikki Huotari

Heikki Huotari attended a one-room school and spent summers on a forest-fire lookout tower. Since retiring from academia/mathematics he has published poems in numerous journals and in five poetry collections. His manuscript, To Justify The Butterfly, won second prize, and publication, in the 2022 James Tate Chapbook Competition.