a bowl of pomegranate seeds and a cup
of oolong, these form the lower
hemisphere on the kitchen page of my atlas.
some translated novels and a potted coffee
plant stretch across the upper. dead
center sits a plate of drying hops for a friend.
away in a desolate lunar corner
a bucket of brown nuka
ferments a set of starved leaf pickles.
how can one decide which mountain
to eat for lunch, which river to drain during,
at which desert mesa to sit?
the front door hinges grow tired, i’m sure,
of opening and closing this world to that,
but like everything, it is another point of travel-
just as each surface in this small american apartment
shapes a page, a mélange of globes.
yet points cannot dissolve, but merely move
to push other points into place. the violence.
the only way to cope is through
tradition, the anthropogenic soul of the absurd.
but here,
i’ve never known tradition, just cargo travel.

-cm