Heikki Huotari

Science Daily says if I’m an artificial
atom and I hang out near my mirror
then I’ll live ten times as long
so I prioritize my images by wingspan,
size and color in a velvet box. Because
I have no children and have never
been in prison or a foxhole,
I’m still free to disbelieve.
And I have three degrees of freedom.
Nothing rotates quite like pie at night
when I’m invisible in my gorilla mask
and astrally projected and Madonna
and I share an office while we’re young,
moonlighting as adjunct professors.

HEIKKI HUOTARI is a retired professor of mathematics. In a past century, he attended a one-room country school and spent summers on a forest-fire lookout tower. His poems have appeared in several journals, including Poetry Northwest and Crazyhorse. A chapbook is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

Grey Wolfe LaJoie

In a moment the little boy
will be surprised by the pop
of the big black balloon.
Hanging from his lips, a limp
flower, which he hands you
without hands.
There are bodies in the air
at all hours of the earth, but
you seem to be sinking into
your dainty dirty garden bed.

How carefully we spin
the bottle, and how soft
it sounds as its wet lips
whistle in motion.

GREY WOLFE LAJOIE is a Creative Writing undergraduate at UNC-Asheville. He is the senior poetry editor at The Rhapsodist Literature and Arts Journal, and his work can be found in his chapbook A Commando in Floral Remembers His Mother, and in the anthology Bits of Sugar and Other Stories, available through Grateful Steps. In his free time, he tries to remember what he used to do when he had free time.