YOUR STORY dear old friend are you angry why won’t you write me beloved teacher is what I called you in my mind mild morn­ing cal­i­for­nia depress­ing light uncer­tain­ly stand­ing between the rooms I ask myself why such anger I walk down­town busy wor­ry­ing all day I feel I am sure a man is hold­ing an impor­tant gera­ni­um in a sto­ry you are […]

WINTER BRANCHES AS TERMINAL SYMPTOMS Black crayons blind­ly scrib­bling, iden­ti­cal name dia­­mond-etched in the blue mir­ror of oxy­gen; glass branch con­duct­ing, wav­ing at you and only you. Win­dow win­dow in the wall, what’s that cross­ing the sky with­out sound? Lone bomber with plen­ty of fuel but no coun­try to return to. So, a few of the not so meek sheep […]

  ELEVATOR INVENTION … Lan­guage-learn­er fear­ful of error as to pro­nounce the Amer­i­cans as part­way back from the dead devoid of the pri­ma­ry sources, phrase in semi­cir­cle, who could tell by the hand­work, lever left by the glass-piece, radi­ance by flex­i­ble curve and grom­met. Safebox at the stroke of twelve, and in the Geor­gian corridors […]

  CHILD Step one: Obtain a new­ly born human baby. Step two: Every morn­ing tell it it is mag­nif­i­cent. Every night tell it it is an abom­i­na­tion. Repeat this process every day until the child moves out of your house. Step three: Pro­ceed with the usu­al child-things: love, uni­forms, etc. Step four: The full sum of all […]

BOYS WILL BE BOYS boys will be boys, dida used to say, the clichéd refrain ring­ing out every time my “boy” cousin got him­self entan­gled into night­mares of his own mak­ing. like when he broke dadu’s mura­no vase while play­ing crick­et, a gift from one of his well-to-do for­eign returned stu­dents, or when he was caught […]

A Cup­cake Bou­tique of One’s Own (or, Mrs. Woolf Said She Would End the Reces­sion Her­self) But, you may say, we asked you to speak about the cur­rent eco­nom­ic reces­sion; what has it got to do with a cup­cake bou­tique of one’s own? I will try to explain. I sat down upon a kitchen stool and […]

DITTY the fal­cons had come in March along with high water it did not want to be spring what­ev­er it had been the water was not leav­ing but the fal­cons were here and every turn of wing said die to a pigeon the cold earth and its lay­er had to give up to sun but snow of an April night made any change […]

→ 2012 Map Lit­er­ary Non­fic­tion Prize ← ABDUL      for my Abbu           As a pro­fes­sor of mul­ti­eth­nic Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture, I often teach the writ­ings of immi­grant authors. We pon­der what it means to speak of “home” and belong­ing, and their oppo­sites: home­less­ness, exile, and the expe­ri­ence of dis­place­ment so lay­ered that peo­ple can spend their life­times unpeel­ing, unfold­ing, and repack­ag­ing it. […]

HEART OF OCCIDENT Pro­logue It was the dry end of a ben­der. The earth was scorched and fis­sured. The mass­es ele­vat­ed the fools into rich heroes. The sky rained mis­siles. Night became per­pet­u­al. The land was ash, the air dust. I raked for pok­er chips in the rub­ble of Harrah’s. A scrawny blonde strum­pet approached me […]

  WRACK ZONE It’s the ocean sound­ing out a pan­ic I oth­er­wise could­n’t pro­nounce. Ouro­boric vow­el fixed to a low sky’s loop of vari­able white. • Decayed rope of bull-head kelp dis­tends from tide- tamped sand. Mind mir­rors that sur­face, shape, at the moment I imag­ine if I thought far enough I’d leave my face. RECEIPT Wall streaked of soot of moths crushed months ago […]

  INVASION Strides the war­rior forth from a GameStop, bear­ing a blast shield with a bla­zon gules; its cod­ed con­stel­la­tions, bul­let-peened, embed the absent mean­ing of the war. The event escapes, but Kry­on­MYnuTs rules: 30 kills: 4 deaths and no air strikes inter­vened. The kill-cam’s slow-mo cap­tures every death, cre­ates an image of pur­pose as […]

CARNAGE IN THE TIME OF GAGA:  A ROMP IN THE AESTHETIC FIELD OF GURLESQUE POETICS   A decade ago two Gen X female poets, Lara Glenum and Arielle Green­berg, iden­ti­fied an emerg­ing trend among dis­parate female poets born of the same gen­er­a­tion. It was not a the­o­ry or an orga­nized move­ment but rather a new […]

REPORT FROM BEHIND THE CASTLE To deal with the King, one must go behind the cur­tain in the castle—for the best inter­est of every­thing offi­cial. This way the peo­ple won’t notice. So much. They will not care to notice. Am I about to mar­ry to the King? There are ladies here. Ladies mount­ing one another. […]

                                                Eleanor Leonne Ben­nett is a pho­tog­ra­ph­er and artist whose award-win­ning work has been show­cased by Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, the World Pho­tog­ra­phy Organ­i­sa­tion, Nature’s Best Pho­tog­ra­phy, Pap­worth Trust, Men­cap, The Wood­land Trust and […]

2012 Map Lit­er­ary Non­fic­tion Con­test Hon­or­able Men­tion     10/31/98           I am a cau­tion­ary tale. I am the after-school spe­cial you tell your col­lege-bound daugh­ter to watch, the pam­phlet on drinking/date rape/safe sex you pick up at the uni­ver­si­ty health cen­ter. If you work up the nerve to lis­ten to my sto­ry, you can­not help […]

Things I nev­er would have said at the job inter­view As an exe­cu­tion­er, I’d have been inclined to show the dead man’s head his dead man’s body after the whisk of the guil­lo­tine, giv­ing his mouth a last chance to move in the shapes of a name he’d nev­er say again, Cather­ine is a love­ly set of sounds or to stare […]

549 At the time when things were formed and put in place, could be “icy” or “i cry.” You do what the man wants, don’t you? It’s like how mon­ey is based on gold. There are no win­dows. No source of light apart from the pro­jec­tions of old movies. Just those films of the car­ni­val again and the beat up hous­es. The […]

THE EXECUTION OF WATER   Table of Con­tents Book i of John Caden­za Book ii of John Caden­za Book iii of John Caden­za Book iv of John Caden­za Book v of John Caden­za Book vi of John Caden­za Book vii of John Caden­za Book viii of John Caden­za Book ix of John Caden­za Book One of Noah […]

FOLLOWUP STORY How many lash­es to make price water house As my mas­cara runs down an alley? He’s no fun, he falls right over. Stand­ing where I am, think­ing about where I’m not. A sad part, but of the show. Sit­ting for his por­trait, What would be The oppo­site of Dori­an Gray? And in the evening movies from the recent past feel More […]

THREE VACATIONS Desirous to spend some time in the neigh­bor­hood where Ner­val hanged him­self, I looked into rent­ing a room in Mont­martre. A friend of mine, a suc­cess­ful pho­tog­ra­ph­er, put me in touch with an acquain­tance of hers, Éti­enne Car­roll, who lived there but who would be vaca­tion­ing dur­ing the month of August. He promptly […]