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Volume 2 Number 2 • Fall - Winter 2010-2011
The maps were always there, in the veins,
in the arteries, under the skin like volcanoes
waiting to erupt. I fold and unfold.
The lines surge ahead.
No body continues as we want them to;
each has a sense of itself,
of what direction to take, what wars to avoid,
which detours look suspicious.
This is not to say a body knows best:
maps get stained, out-dated,
torn, brittle, lost. Maps never
take the weather into their hearts.
Nothing can make me weep like my body.
I try to go it alone,
but I lose my way. I return
to the doctors, the pain meds,
the cane, the crazy ideas that come to me
while driving around,
in spite of the cost of gas.
Elsewhere on this map, I can see
other bodies. I want to go there,
any new place, new blood.
I want to remind myself
of the pleasure in traveling without maps,
letting the world’s curves force me
in my directions.
Christine Delea's poems are upcoming in New Ohio Review, Zone 3, and Tribeca Poetry Review, among others. She is the author of The Skeleton Holding Up the Sky from Main Street Rag Press, as well as two chapbooks and many other published and award-winning poems. She is originally from Long Island, NY, and has lived all over the U.S. She received her Ph.D. from the University of North Dakota.