Whereabouts

Glove box rummages itself & dumps: fuzzy cough

droppings & stuck (menthol) among them a misdirectional

map intrigues me: say clotheslines’

fripperies hopping the breeze off the alley & garbage

lids clanging downhill to the sea: say there

in the sea floes

of penguins bobbing up to Argentine flamingos.

How hard is it to get lost? Listen to lost

useless horses whingeing for home & hames, a lost

grail stuffed with dirt deaf to human legends long

unstrung of sacred tune & lost,

children prodded along in the loops of war,

hopscotch mistake, the cast stone

skipped off the lake instead & lost the tournament

to the nice policeman there with the ice cream

precinct & his body buddy Dad. Dad declares he knows

by the spit & stripe of her this’s no one of his own,

his kids mope, & he goes. Ear to ear I must

look lucky at last, librarian

at the dictionary of things looking-up ever since

I hid in the glove box, pretending to be directions.