Wednesday, August 7, 2024: Victor D. Infante's "Traveling by Map"

 


Bio: Victor D. Infante was born in Pittsburgh, raised in SoCal, educated in England, now lives in Worcester.is the features editor for The Worcester Telegram & Gazette, and the editor for Worcester Magazine. His first full-length poetry collection, City of Insomnia, was published by Write Bloody Publishing, and his poetic novella, Suffer For This, is set to come out later this year on Moon Tide Press. He's an Aquarius. Go figure.


Traveling by Map


After Fozzie Bear


We arrange to meet in places that don’t exist:

Coffee in Burma, chicken cacciatore in Leningrad,

tiramisu in that little place in New Amsterdam, the one

where we kissed behind drawn curtains, became silhouettes

in some black and white movie, the ones they play at night

to make insomniacs feel more lonely.


Sometimes we miss each other.

You pinned a note to the buttocks of a statue

in a park in Constantinople; apologies written in Esperanto

spray-painted on a wall in Dana, Massachusetts,

long, perfect lines of Braille, beautifully wrought,

on the back of a menu in Abyssinia.


Wish you were here, you write, in a postcard from Ceylon.

The globe spins too fast. I would have called, but my voice

was drowned out by motion, drum kettle cacophony that comes

when love and history whiz past us. I’ve booked a hotel room

in Siam, tickets to a production of “Cats” in Czechoslovakia,

hollandaise-drenched eggs in Eldoradoville.


Come quickly, you write, in a rushed, cramped hand,

find a faster way to fly, find me before the maps

rewrite themselves again.


© 2024 Victor D. Infante

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