People Love These Maps

Having the hack artist’s capacity

For variety and speed, he learned

To avoid any town too specific,

But to deploy more colors than needed,

Repeating much the same relationships.

He could sketch the rooms of recent marriage

In forty-five or fifty seconds flat.

He assumed clear scale unnecessary.

He never left out a single closet.

Customers could grab the maps, inks still wet,

To find themselves in the caricatures.

They always did. It was illusory,

But it felt better than satellite maps—

Looking at one of his drawings was like

Finding your childhood address, your front door,

Your parents and earliest, fiercest loves

Sketched as a web of static narratives

And, at the same time, there at the front door,

Or whimsically in the old home’s mailbox,

The results of your personality

Survey and your compatibility

Evaluation as friends and partners

And usually an Easter egg detail,

With the flourish of a stage mentalist,

Something you would have thought only you knew,

The suggestion of a favorite toy

Or first gift between you, in the corner.