Nkechi Ebubedike, Cloud Collage VI (detail), featured in AGNI 104
Signs
Why not leave small offerings
on rural routes for the mystics
at the D.O.T.
who in their cabalistic
wisdom make a sign
mean less the more
of them you pass.
There’s peril in
the arrow, in its angle—up
and to the left.
A man might come from
a strange country, to travel
in the night.
An animal
might publish its uncertainty
in the median.
I want not to take literally
all indications, nor seek
secret shortcuts to
a private drive.
I am off the map.
A wayward vector, the metaphor
of S—as in here
go slow awhile,
or next 2 miles, soft
shoulder.
Published:
| Online 2005