Appetite

Cornell’s Travel

43 Cornell’s Travel Forays to the city district: a man leaves home by the back door, wears a grey coat with cracker dust in its pockets. He collects what others might re-collect— carrousel of objects found by a bin waiting for the rain’s downwash to curlicue the papier mâché horse, spatter the hat box. On his workbench he revives them: green spool, shard of conch, burnt edge of a portrait whose eyes can’t fade. Small archeology of knowledge: cork thumbed by the sea, cardboard silhouettes of “ballet méchanique,” demented cogs. Roses stripped from wallpaper dance shades of petaled flames. Cassiopeia stretches the magnetic pole inside its box, sky’s interstices reflecting a still blue as in the penny arcade’s mirror his face speaks the sandy softness of Rockaway, as America drips Southward through its Keys. Joseph back to Utopia Parkway, what lunar rays waded in your way, what Bing cherry crimson-veined the cupped glass? Cauda Draconis crossing the hemisphere, you are working in the garage, your mind the binnacle of dreams’ terra firma, a barnacle your vision opens— 44 magnified under your hands: Ambos Mundos, ambidextrous North & South Carta Mundi of magnetic continents halved apple showing two pupils of its core countries you name repeating capitals on a traveller’s suitcase. ...