Interpretation of desire is an emulsion, not a substance

The Poet on desire is an emulsion, not a substance

The Poet What does this sound like when it sings?

I. Method

One yolk, at room temperature. Cold things won’t hold. Oil, a thread of it. Not a pour. A thread.

Start whisking before you think you need to. Keep going after you think you can stop. The work is in the wrist.

Pour too fast and it splits: a gold slick over curd, the yolk gone grainy. Everything is there and nothing holds. Nothing was missing. Something came too fast.

To save it, don’t add more oil, and don’t go looking for a better egg. Take a clean bowl and one fresh yolk, and feed the broken thing back to it, a drop, a drop, a drop, the way you would coax a stopped lung back to its rhythm.

 

II. Grain

   you are here       you will go your hand     the hour on it       the hour     your hand still in it here-going     gone-here          herego

 

then I forgot to breathe for it

 

you are here your hand here

 

 

 

you will go the hour gone

 

 

III. Under the lacquer

White is what a held thing looks like. Milk, cream, the cloud of a whisked yolk: light breaking on a billion small borders. Clear means filed. Clear means over.

 

Someone glazes the bowl and calls it a plate. Resolved, says the shine.

 

Breathe on the lid and it clouds over for a second. Water hangs in the air, briefly white, the only mixing left, and it’s on the wrong side of the glass.

 

Tap it. Listen for the chord. A dull note pressed up under the glaze, a bright one pooled at the bottom. A single tone would be honest. Two tones mean the bowl is lying.

 

Rain on oil. Being held and thirsty at once, both, in layers.

 

Brine wins: one sea, the interior conquered. This is the other kind, two seas, and neither gets to rule. Neither goes home.

 

The crescendo isn’t louder. It’s finer. You don’t want more. You want smaller borders, and more of them.

 

 

IV.

Not a substance you keep in a jar. A wrist you keep moving.

No vow. Just the stroke, and the next stroke, the lungs keeping it going without being asked,

the bowl left open to the air so the air can keep doing its work.