In a past century Heikki Huotari attended a one-room school and spent summers on a forest-fire lookout tower, is now a retired math professor, and has published three chapbooks, one of which won the Gambling The Aisle prize, and one collection, Fractal Idyll (A..P Press). Another collection is in press.
Attribution
I attribute agency to you, you bad bad dog and,
the unnecessary and the insufficient rising like
an iris, past stochastic practices, unmodified,
are codified at your expense and/or to
your advantage. Should you mumble something
you may see a blur. Revoking ghost marimbas,
you have many academic references to write
before you reach the speed of light. What is
a bed of lettuce but the here and now?
Dispensing Empathy
As elbows bending backward might be knees,
beneath my dignity, so I’m the lazy arrow
stopping half way so the target brings
itself to me so, taken seriously or consecutively,
ignorance surrounds the public-private partnership
of post-apocalyptic birds and post-apocalyptic bees
so, Hello. Home, James, I say to the vacancy,
and turn the siren and the mirror neurons on,
and withhold judgment till the second judgment day.
The Explanandum
Your arms go out like chicken wings when
you put careful weight on that particular left foot.
That means that everyone but you has been
disqualified. That means you won.
Now you may harbor wires and pipes and
termite lives and call yourself a double window,
you may call yourself a gyro- or kaleido-scopic
pinwheel, you may call yourself an oscillating fan.
You may propel yourself. Your definition reeks
with meaning now beyond mere use and they
can do without you what they won’t.