Your Current GPS Location
She tried to tell me that the past
could be simply abandoned like
unclaimed baggage at the airport
or bus station,
or even, one day, with the closing
of a door and the turning of a key—
left behind forever in the rear-view mirror
like a house full of someone else’s belongings
(not yours, not anymore) in a town full of strangers
who never did you any favors.
But, I say the past can slip
a microchip on you
when you’re not looking;
I say the past always knows
your current GPS location.
Jason Ryberg is the author of fourteen books of poetry,
six screenplays, a few short stories, a box full of folders,
notebooks and scraps of paper that could one day be
(loosely) construed as a novel, and, a couple of angry
letters to various magazine and newspaper editors.
He is currently an artist-in-residence at both
The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s
and the Osage Arts Community, and is an editor
and designer at Spartan Books. His latest collection
of poems is Are You Sure Kerouac Done It This Way!?
(co-authored with John Dorsey, and Victor Clevenger,
OAC Books, 2021). He lives part-time in Kansas City, MO
with a rooster named Little Red and a billygoat named
Giuseppe and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks,
near the Gasconade River, where there are also
many strange and wonderful woodland critters.
This poem is from South Broadway Press’ new anthology,
Dwell: Poems About Home. Purchase here.
South Broadway Ghost Society 