Jet Pack

When I was young, my dad could fly. He flew out of fear, I think, getting a hold of his terror by the control stick and bending it to his will. I remember going up in a little Cessna cockpit, and I remember the pilot handing off control to my father, but I can’t recall when this was or if it was real. I remember the my hands on the fake fabric of stiff seats, but maybe I’m just remembering what I thought it was like to see my dad fly.

The book is real. His notes sketched into margins, equal signs and question marks. But what I take out of this book isn’t what the technical writers put into it. I don’t think like a pilot thinks. When I see that there are two main kinds of drag, I assume we’re speaking metaphorically.

So Manual of Flight is a symbolic book to me. An educational work, a foreign text, for sure, but as much about personal momentum as airspeed, and more about drag than drag. The only way I know how to communicate that is to change the context of the words until they’re weird for you, too. I hope.

This is the final poem in this series.

Parasite Drag

Reduced pressure equals increased lift.
Parasite drag increases with airspeed.

Work your empennage.
Work your elevators.

Positive static is stability tending
toward your original equilibrium.

Negative static? The ball’s displaced
and moving farther from equilibrium.

You yaw in the direction of the lowered aileron.
Call it adverse yaw. Call it.

To measure your true course, center
over an intersection.

The course line crosses the azimuth in
the direction of flight.

Increase your airspeed and the parasite
drag increases, too.