from Blue Episodes

5. COMPOEST 1: Faya Dayi, Eugene, Addis Ababa, Mac Miller, Theodore Adorno, Cornell West, Smithfield, Utah, Durango

Forty-three people are perilously dangling. There is no remedy for your framed mind; it’s got to go. She tilts her head into the nook of his neck, they fondling each other at the bar, on display for those confined to gazing. A kite swoops down and snatches the sandwich from his hand, then drops it several memories later. When did we start taking pleasure in tearing each other apart? Harold claims he heard angels last night dancing in his frozen ear. Looking up at the bird in the sky, fly—why?—when you can sign right here on the frosty line? Every time I go out I feel like I’m spreading disease around. I scoop up a lungful and pass it along, a kind of atomized intimacy. As “there is no right life in the wrong one,” there’s only this wrong life to get right by.

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Logged the bald eagle flying over head, head-strong into headwinds: agency against the odds, says West, when we flip the page. Large diaphanous hoses hung from the ceiling, shooting clumps of whey into the vats below with their metal rakes. You poured bags of salt into your wounds for a living then pushed “stir.” Clumsy nature, ugly lakes, an awkward valley with its amateur rivulets. Let’s keep the spirit high and out of reach from the wallowing monads. The advantage that comes with age is that you’re closer to death, your unrequited life-time partner. To be teased so long to no avail and then a final, premature ejaculation. I sniff my fingers for evidence, trying to bring it all back in play. Why couldn’t I have accepted that she would go off with him again, when he passed through town? Fire escapes on the horizon.