Misdirection
Bags breeze past my ankles in an empty lot,
the twisted heads of plastic ghosts.
Not a lot can happen here, except everything.
Accept it, I’m lost loading Google Maps in 2015.
It’s too far to walk, though civilization is everywhere
like hives, my skin reddens from the cold.
I am Santa Claus planning retirement.
I am Amelia Earhart flying towards grave adventure.
I am The Bermuda Triangle swallowing sailors.
On a street corner, I turn left. It’s never right.
It doesn’t stop me, though my phone gets no signal.
Not so smart in Nowhere Land, like government
SafeThink and GroupThink and man, at least a hive
mind has honey, and directions. Security, however
false, is something cultivated. Fabrication allows me
enough room to shove off, get lost.
I am Columbus without the genocide.
I am a Salem Witch without the burn.
I am a misplaced woman without a clue.
No one to take me in, no hotel or inn to keep me.
Few hostels in this country, people too hostile
to share space. Am I a grounded astronaut?
Will the stars guide me home? There
is a Starbucks on every corner bankrupting
me with twenty-ingredient concoctions. Is someone
better searching this grid of concrete and road signs?
Will they look for me between cappuccinos?
I miss 8-track tapes I haven’t seen in person.
I miss the absence of self-realization.
I miss the turn near my apartment every day.
Jennifer Ruth Jackson is an award-winning poet and fiction writer whose work has appeared in Red Earth Review, Banshee, and more. She runs a blog for disabled and/or neurodivergent writers called The Handy, Uncapped Pen from an apartment she shares with her husband. Follow her on Twitter @jenruthjackson.