First Course In Turbulence

The Unattainable

The Unattainable Often, those first years of divorce, his car windows are smashed. Often in this case is thrice but I can imagine often being once. Mouse in a trap. Fire sky. Heard shot. He lives in a minor key of fear but also a lot in bed with a new woman met one yellow day on the labyrinthine passageways where only the cyclists seem to know where they’re going, endangering those who don’t. Safety catch, melted crayon, broken string. When she steps from the pool of her uniform, her breasts . . . well, who wouldn’t sense the quick exhaustion of descriptive language seeing those breasts, say Parthenon? say comet? say lion running? but luckily along comes Breton with “handkerchiefs drying on a rosebush” which is truer to the spirit than any actual appearance. Bones of a canary. Destiny. Often beauty is disguised by appearance just as music can be by sound, the dreaming wish by the waking wish until there’s this terrible stress because a thing must finally reveal itself, break itself. Leaning shadow, cinder heart, shouts. In Gorky’s The Unattainable, the line begins to free itself from any utility of contour and becomes a trajectory. One day, Gorky hung himself from a beam 6 but left us in charge of these ravishments. Hello, interior of the sun. Usually alone on Sundays, she won’t get off until late, the man steams rice because it’s cheap and easy and feels in its austerity poetic like candles during a power outage or trying on overcoats all afternoon, buying none. Chosen feather, smoke smudge, red parabola within flesh. 7 ...