metsker’s maps
︎︎︎ Ian Gwin
︎AUG 5, 2021
please do not touch the rotating globe, shelves stacked
with eternal pilgrimage, labels and locations (mostly english)
— there you are, she meets her with, raising a canned seattle
beneath the inverted world metsker — bald, bespectacled
— deals in scales and indexes, the quiet flutter of paper
through the unwrinkled continents — there his finger fords
a course around the creases of borders and nations
and to flag and price tag designs, neptune’s deflated
the backroom clutters possible world on a low, midcentury desk
historic maps take up the corner, with coin banks and the puzzle of jerusalem
outside, the wind tears through parking lots, dining sets
phones guiding passerby past the state hotel, fantasy limited
a false entrance, italians, a bearded man eating garbage
with eternal pilgrimage, labels and locations (mostly english)
— there you are, she meets her with, raising a canned seattle
beneath the inverted world metsker — bald, bespectacled
— deals in scales and indexes, the quiet flutter of paper
through the unwrinkled continents — there his finger fords
a course around the creases of borders and nations
and to flag and price tag designs, neptune’s deflated
the backroom clutters possible world on a low, midcentury desk
historic maps take up the corner, with coin banks and the puzzle of jerusalem
outside, the wind tears through parking lots, dining sets
phones guiding passerby past the state hotel, fantasy limited
a false entrance, italians, a bearded man eating garbage
Ian Gwin is a writer and translator from Seattle, Washington. He holds a B.A. in Linguistics and is currently pursuing his master’s in Scandinavian Languages and Literatures at the University of Washington.