Content Warning: blood, mental health, dark themes
Heikki Huotari – Platelets
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1. Don't put the fire out, Aristotle, til you see the iris. Certify me twice and shame on me. She loves me and she loves my dog then loves but one of us and past performance is no guarantee of future rapture. Now you see a magnum opus now you don't. I'm law-abiding so my knowledge of the pie's position and my knowledge of the pie's velocity are inversely related.
2. Now you see no backs of heads on backs of bills. I see a gastropod in orbit, I say it's a teapot and I'm not responsible for acts of god. I see potential energy and I say, Sequins, why so serious? One to partition India and one to choose, chameleons on green screens have foreknowledge. Of necessity if some are numbers, some are public eyes. As of today there is no Isle of Man.
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3. It's thoughts and prayers or thoughts not prayers or prayers not thoughts or neither thoughts nor prayers. The lily of the hothouse is above the law and every tale the lily spins is to the lily's credit. Obviously with my body I'm connecting dots and all photography is time-lapse. Turbulence delayed is turbulence denied.
4. Through natural processes, from sand to glass and back, the Texas step is easily repeated. Nor concomitant nor cause, as circuits are to spring-mass-dampers so hearts are to unprepared remarks. Complexity is comforting. What oscillation is transverse to is a carrier, what working the interstices the street receives. Before the big bang was the prequel.
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5. Some reflected, some absorbed and some sent without ceremony through, with every able-bodied anchorperson deputized all nerves converge and visages on toast are bitten into. When a rat begat a rat, a rib a rib, and I was tickled schizophrenic, Mother Mary said my face would freeze that way and I said, Fine with me, there's more to my geometry than misdirection, fine with me.
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.
Artwork: Blood Runs Female: An Evolution by Patricia Tudosa
(mixed media on canvas, acrylic, pencil, oil pastel on canvas, 60.5x44.5 in)
Patricia Tudosa is an artist and writer who brings experience across continents, disciplines, and socioeconomic circumstances into her contemplative, often political work. Her paintings have been displayed in the US and Europe. Originally from Romania, she lives in NYC and is available for commissions. https://www.patriciatudosa.com/