Featured Poem: On Being Asked Directions to Drumcree by Howard Wright

by Megan Sexton  ·  May 20, 2012

Howard Wright

On Being Asked Directions to Drumcree

by two hacks from a London broadsheet,

I lean into their foul Isuzu 4×4, all bull-bars

and pocket phones, burger boxes and burnt stubs,

the black golf-ball compass floating helpless

on the dingy windscreen, and tell them

like everywhere else it’s a long way from here.

I elaborated with hand signals, the driver

thumbnailing a map and making a note,

his passenger tapping the compass as if it were

the oracle, the life-saver, as if it made

a button of difference here of all places,

after my parting-shot pointed them

in the opposite direction to arrive

sometime tomorrow or the day after that.

From Five Points Vol. 13.2