by Jacob Schepers
Whenever the word compass finds mention in a passing conversation I ask for clarification. Is this the kind used in exploration or in mathematics. I’m primed often with some retort on the off-chance some smartass quips that mathematics is an exploration and vice versa, but I’ll spare you. Your time is precious, as I can see from your wrist full of watches, your trench coat heavy with who knows how many other timepieces and keepers of such measurements. But if I get an honest response, which I do badly need, this ol’ ticker’s seen enough heartache itself, I settle, satiated, heaving off the duvet cover causing this unending nausea. I worry for the world and the things it contains, cedar chest that it is. I’ve heard it said that when anyone buys a shovel, then the need for a hole appears on almost every surface. It practically calls out for it. That’s the utility of the thing itself. I worry about the design going into it, that portal of intent and the bleeding over into labor. Into sorrow. The night sky does indeed look scattershot with its holes of peeking light from some other somewhere. I worry over the punctures we inflict by our rockets and dreams. I worry about the people who are passing through this planet’s revolving doors.
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Jacob Schepers is the author of the poetry collection A Bundle of Careful Compromises (Outriders Poetry Project, 2014), the chapbook Connections & Choreography (Bottlecap Press, 2024), and the microchap Shipwreck Abstracted (Ghost City Press, 2024). He holds an MFA and PhD from the University of Notre Dame, where he now teaches in the University Writing Program. With Sara Judy, he edits ballast, a journal of poetry and poetics. More at www.jacobschepers.com.
Image: Alex Guillaume
ID: old, hanging pocket watches.
Psaltery & Lyre 