The Cartographer’s Lament
While other kids were playing hybrid football
I was drawing outlines of South America. I
fell in love with the concept of scale. Chile
was my favorite, its skinny profile made me
pee each time I drew it in place. Later
I added capitols & a legend for elevations.
I once squeezed France into a tight wad
& unraveled it in Africa. It didn’t fit
so I sent it back to its proper place. Spain
was jealous so I gave it a longer coastline.
Portugal didn’t seem to care one way
or another. I figured it was full of port.
I loved maneuvering the Matterhorn,
indicating its existence with a big “+”
which I felt didn’t justify its majesty.
I’ll go there one day I told myself and see
it with my own eyes, rent a chalet near a glacier
sit on the porch with some wine & cheese,
take it all in.
I honed my cartographic skills so well
that I expanded my horizons into most
of the other continents. Antarctica was never
a challenge — nothing there but blue ice &
sorrow.
My father insisted that I play football
to keep me socially grounded. The kids
were shocked that I could kick the pigskin orb
so high into the air that angels intercepted it
& ran it all the way to the line of scrimmage,
which by the crudest of estimations, lies
somewhere between Bogota & Rio de Janeiro.
.
How to Start Kimchi in the Winter
The cabbages are done for the year.
Asparagus crowns so long ago it makes my head
spin
like where & how & why did all this time
screw itself into the ground, disappear
like fermenting pears
on a late-October afternoon. We hurry
to the gate to make sure the hinges
are well-oiled
before winter sheds its shaggy coat
across the back of the kitchen chair.
It never asks to be served
a bowl of soup from the stove. It lifts
the pot & pours the contents
down its deep blue throat
while we hunker down in cars on frigid nights,
listening to the DJ’s voice somewhere
in an insulated
booth in the Chicago burbs. We dread
jumping out into the night, boldly grabbing
the key to jam into the back
door, such a tiny slit for those like me
with thick padded gloves & a gray scarf
wrapped around my ears & neck.
I see the pansy soldiers slumping in the dark,
their useless spines deactivated, blackened with
night, their eyes barely visible
waiting, like us, for some festive color,
some hint of green, the chilis & garlic,
assuring us
that the endless cycle may wear us out
before we see another head of cabbage
in July.
.
John Dorroh has never fallen into an active volcano or captured a hummingbird. He has however baked bread with Austrian monks and drunk a significant portion of their beer. Five of his poems were nominated for Best of the Net. Others have appeared in numerous journals including Feral, North Dakota Quarterly, River Heron, Selcouth Station, and Kissing Dynamite. He had two chapbooks published in 2022.
.
Stone Poetry Quarterly 