Before a globe is pressed into a sphere,

the shape of the paper is an asterisk.

 

This planet is holding our place in line:

look out for metallic chips of meteor

 

hurtling through the universe. On my drive

to work, I saw my neighbor’s lawn boiling

 

over with birds. Like the yard was a giant lasagna

and the birds were the perfectly bubbled cheese,

 

not yet crisped and brown. And I was hungry

to keep driving, driving all the way down

 

to central Florida, to my parents’ house

and into their garage, and up the pull-down stairs

 

in their attic to find my old globe from 1983.

I used to sit in the living room with Kenny Rogers

 

playing on mom’s record player. I spun and spun

that globe and traced my fingers along

 

the nubby Himalayas, the Andes — measured

with the span of my thumb and forefinger

 

and the bar scale that showed how many miles

per inch. I tried to pinch the widest part

 

of the Pacific Ocean, the distance between me

and India, me and the Philippines. The space

 

between the shorelines was too wide. My hand

was always empty when it came to land, to knowing

 

where is home. I dip my hands in the sea. I net

nothing but seaweed and a single, dizzy smelt.

 

–Lucky Fish (2011)

Photo By: Jiuck