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
woudn’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
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.