There is a Sea Inside a Map

Millicent Borges Accardi

I don’t know about size 

it could be as small as a shoe 

box or as large as a Richard Serra 

sculpture of a ship’s hull. 

It is square and off white, with a red 

ribbon ruining the translated frame,

pierced right through its middle 

like an AIDs ribbon in the 1990s.

I am not sure what I can say in these

times that matter-- not the times-- 

but my mattering. Muttering

to myself. This is nearly an open King 

James Bible, with a page preserved

under a heavy-tempered glass cabinet, 

on display, the kind where the paper is so 

brittle that museum curators can only

turn the page every 1,009 years.