Nobody comes here

who is not lost or home.

3 pm: the hour of housecats whiskering
across open-palmed backyards

while cars shark up this hill

much too fast.
The road’s a double nothing: it splits

into tarry hoops of cul-de-sacs

that slingshot all cars
back the way they came.

In passenger seats

people shake their maps like babies. 
6 am: the sun’s barely a blister

on the horizon’s thumb and a runner,

new to town, chisels 
up the street,

meets the club foot of one dead end.

Back at the fork, lactic patches 
on his high-vis legs,

he tries downhill and gets

nowhere again. 
Twice in a row and he believes he’s arrived

in some nightmare town

which he now fears
he might never escape. The highway,

close enough to burr in the ear,

promised him order 
but here he’s mazed

in these two ends, bent

on staying dead.