The Cartography of Oranges

In everyone’s junior-high-school geography class,
the teacher takes an orange, and says,
“Imagine this orange as the world,
or rather, as a model of the world. We call that model

a globe.” The geography teacher cuts the orange in half,
and he dips the halves in water to kill
the scent, to preserve our more virginal
senses. After he scoops out the fruit, he carefully shows

us the hollows of each half. “This,” he says, “is what
happened to the globe when Mercator
got his hands on it.” As the teacher
smashes the orange on the wax-papered desk, we students

try hard not to think of the hand of God at that moment,
while the hand of this teacher lifts
the flattened peel for us to witness.
“See? See what the world becomes now?” We sit. We are

watching our teacher, like any such teacher, he having risen
to a position beyond his talents. We
are witnessing, bearing his anger.
“See? What lesson does this experiment tell you about maps?”

I confess that everything I have learned about the science
of cartography began with oranges,
and everything I have learned
about sex, and therefore love, began with oranges. For with

oranges, I learned how any map is a lie of location, a slip
of language that seduces me to come
near the surface of where I might
become certain of where I am exactly. For with oranges, I

understand the globe of passion. Beneath my touching its skin,
naturally, there is flesh, secretive and
arterial, and water, and I can taste it,
even before I open the orange, even before the map tells me

how to get there.

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