This poem is taken from PN Review 212, Volume 39 Number 6, July - August 2013.
'Map' and Other Poems
Map
Pinned to the bedside wall, my map
of the British Isles charts temperaments,
anticipates our movements. Its colouring
is arbitrary and without consequence,
except this morning - when, waking too early,
I see that we are both from yellow places
and that while mine spreads out hazily, like a fried egg
left to its own devices, yours is strung up
on tenterhooks, policed by a high-voltage fence,
charged on all sides by blue electrodes.
Streaked with lines, your city is etched
on the faces its ring road runs around.
Then I look upwards at the counties we escape to:
unfolded from the spine of the great north road,
North Yorkshire is a green paint butterfly
freshly opened, poised to be taken in
...
Pinned to the bedside wall, my map
of the British Isles charts temperaments,
anticipates our movements. Its colouring
is arbitrary and without consequence,
except this morning - when, waking too early,
I see that we are both from yellow places
and that while mine spreads out hazily, like a fried egg
left to its own devices, yours is strung up
on tenterhooks, policed by a high-voltage fence,
charged on all sides by blue electrodes.
Streaked with lines, your city is etched
on the faces its ring road runs around.
Then I look upwards at the counties we escape to:
unfolded from the spine of the great north road,
North Yorkshire is a green paint butterfly
freshly opened, poised to be taken in
...
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