When, on the third day, double doors were opened, we discovered our loss leader had absconded, had absconded with. Subject to play-by-play, proscription and exoneration, every last man on the planet is a skin veneer. May we, without one twisting motion, invent memories just like we did last year? Is it at sunrise or sunset that you would walk hand-holding on the beach? Which beach?

Heikki Huotari 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 two collections, Fractal Idyll (A..P Press) and The Knowable Emotions (Lynx House Press).