Yearbook (11.2)

Open up your opera. “How does one kiss on the edge of a park, near a carrefour, in the middle of life, after a misunderstanding, watched by a South American General and fortified by several thousand novels?” Merely open up your opera: aperture of song, flecked indigo, red, saffron, silt-grey, sandusky: a live raw unintention. That’ll do, sifted. I rode from 14th and Pettygrove to 11th and Stark carrying 2 sleeves of white #3 to-go boxes strapped under the shoulder straps of my backpack, which was slung by the chest clip over my left shoulder and cut off the circulation a bit, and I could only steer with the right hand. We speak as part of a massive system of shunts and ravels, oxidizing faster than we can learn how, in the sun and salt air, churning its rickety shadow against the great harbor wall—and so we must speak directly through whatever channels clear, sparing no distinction, making the botched equations disclose through their black grillwork a square stab of sky. I’m perfecting my nervous laugh.