First Course In Turbulence

Warbler

Warbler My novelist is suffering from an unknown. She sits at her desk weeping and her tears are as rain upon my elephant skull. After eroticism, suffering is my favorite subject. What is her skin made of? A lot of water doesn’t come close to explaining it. The writing is on the wrong side of the wall. Sometimes I go in there with a dust rag and there’s a warbler outside her window. Maybe yellow rumped. Maybe titular. Fucking bird, trying to ruin it for everyone. It sings: hapless gyroscope, hunka burning, I melt the snow. How should I know? We must all disappear somewhere. First you will be sitting at your desk then you will be standing beside yourself and it will no longer be as if you are trying to open a door and unable, trying to speak and unable, not knowing the trees that have always roamed there, not knowing the rain that has always fallen and the conditional will no longer masquerade as certainty and your childhood pleading will not return. The problem isn’t that you will become dust but that you ever thought you aren’t already. I believe she will be able to use all this all this she at some point she may be able to use all this maybe half of this as material. 12 In this day and age, there can be no composition without decomposition. Sometimes I wish I had the strength to drink a cup of coffee. It is not night, it’s just dark. Sometimes I wish I had the strength to really clean this place. Vacuum inside the elephant skull, move all the furniture, even her tympanic desk which was made by her grandfather from the breastbones of broken boats. Not a single nail. Once he rode a horse through his own kitchen. Later he was surrounded by a beautiful sphere of light. 13 ...