Map Literary: A Journal of Contemporary Writing and Art
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    • Jay Merill "Cherry Red"
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  • Archives
    • 2017 >
      • Fiction 2017 >
        • Kathryn Holzman, "Eating Meat"
        • Kaitlyn Burd, "Nature with You in It"
        • Katie Young Foster, "Promotion"
        • William Cordeiro, "Selections from Whispering Gallery"
        • Alexandra Renwick, "The Life of an Artifact in Duodecadal Glances"
        • Lizzi Wolf, "My Brother's Therapist"
      • Poetry 2017 >
        • Keith Mark Gaboury
        • Mark Decarteret
        • Douglas Piccinnini
        • Matthew McBride
        • Jim Daniels
        • Sally Ashton
        • Raymond Farr
      • Nonfiction 2017 >
        • Charlie Moses, "Dear Friend"
        • Pamela Woolford, "This Is What Happened"
        • Jennifer Martelli, "Phobiacompendia"
    • 2016 >
      • Fiction 2016 >
        • Loie Merritt, "The Edge of the Sea is a Strange and Beautiful Place"
        • Mitchell Grabois, "i"
        • Kelle Groom, "25 Reasons to Attend the Gala"
        • Mike Shepley, "Killing Symbols"
        • Jody Azzouni, "Owning Things"
        • Dan Gutstein, "Like Airplanes and Stars"
        • Kate Imbach, "Diamondland"
      • Poetry 2016 >
        • Jeff Alessandrelli
        • Daniel Coudriet
        • Peter Leight
        • John Wells
        • Jenna Cardinale
        • Isabelle Shepherd
        • Michael Robins
        • Will Walker
        • Bridget Sprouls
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        • Hugh Behm-Steinberg
        • Caroline Knox
        • David Dodd Lee
        • John Deming
        • David McLoghlin
    • 2015 >
      • Poetry 2015 >
        • Adam Clay
        • Kyle Hemmings
        • Matthew Henriksen
        • Megan Kaminski
        • Emily Kendal Frey
        • Noelle Kocot
        • Katy Lederer
        • John Lowther
        • Nathaniel Sverloff
        • Franz Werfel -- James Reidel
      • Fiction 2015 >
        • Erin Bedford, "Riesenrad"
        • James Braziel, "Jick's Chevrolet"
        • James Braziel, "Vittate"
        • Adrian Class, "Or Flights"
        • Erica L. Kaufman, "It Buried Us"
        • Nolan Liebert, "Gravity of Hearts"
        • Heather Noland, "Cosmic Slump"
        • Tom Whalen, "In the Cathedral"
      • Nonfiction 2015 >
        • Rebecca Cook, "What the Hammer Said When the Hammer Hit the Girl"
        • Margot Kelley, "Companion Species"
    • Fall 2014 >
      • Poetry Fall 2014 >
        • Stephanie Anderson
        • John Buckley and Martin Ott
        • Vanessa Couto Johnson
        • John Estes
        • Anne Gorrick
        • Henry Israeli
        • Keegan Lester
        • John Loughlin
        • Douglas Luman
        • Danielle Mitchell
        • Alexandria Peary
        • Marcus Slease
        • Georg Trakl / James Reidel
      • Fiction Fall 2014 >
        • Matt Rowan, "Dog's Best Friend"
        • Kelli Anne Noftle, "Before She Was Olive"
        • Chris Okum, "Ratatat"
        • Jon Fried, "Cashing In"
        • Lisa C. Taylor, "Visible Wounds"
        • Sarah Kahn, "Break"
        • Rebekah Morton, "Big Sis"
      • Nonfiction Fall 2014 >
        • Stephen Benz, "Night Then Morning: Elko, Nevada"
        • Joseph C. Jiuliani, "Of Stealing and of Being Stolen"
        • Lindsay Chudzik, "Jailface"
        • Robert D. Vivian, "Just After Rain"
    • Spring 2014 >
      • Poetry Spring 2014 >
        • Simeon Berry
        • Molly Brodak
        • Wyn Cooper
        • Brian Foley
        • Tim Kahl
        • Caroline Knox
        • Rob MacDonald
        • Benjamin Paloff
      • Fiction Spring 2014 >
        • Gareth David Anderson, "Cupcake"
        • Halsted M. Bernard, "Your Hands"
        • Patrick Cole, "Pick-up Lines"
        • Joshua Graber, "This Fine Experience"
        • Lola Grace, "Natural Birth"
        • Robert E. Tanner, "Non-Disclosure Disagreement"
      • Art Spring 2014
    • 2012 & 2013
  • Pedagogy
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JENNIFER MARTELLI
​
Phobiacompendia


​
Basophobia (Fear of Standing)
 
Before any of us had menstruated, we tried to levitate one another. 10 years old, we’d put a finger under the dead weight of our friend: light as a feather, stiff as a board, light as a feather, stiff as a board, light as a feather, stiff as a board, light as a feather, until we could lift her body off the cellar floor. This was the year The Exorcist came out: when you went into the movie, they gave you a brown bag with your ticket, in case you vomited.  They tied the possessed girl to the bed by her wrists and ankles, so she wouldn’t rise to the ceiling or hurt herself, though she broke free and masturbated with a sharp metal crucifix, then her mother’s head. I remember thinking it looked like she had given birth to her mother, breach.
 
Vastaphobia (Fear of Looming Things)
 
While the Vietnam War was being fought, the statue of Mary in an old lady’s front yard began to talk. When she predicted cancers and the end of the world, someone gouged her face off with the claw end of a hammer.  Then, they covered her with a big black trash bag, right over her veil, which was peeling-paint-China-blue, with white cement underneath. And under the veil, her hair was black. Then she was gone.  Where I was from, there were so many Marys, it was like they were birthed from the one giant Mary who loomed way up on Orient Heights over the city, 35’ high.
 
Taphaphobia (Fear of Being Buried Alive)
 
In the classical Mediterranean world, wives cooked by a small statue of Hestia, or Vesta, who was the inbred daughter of Titans. Her priestesses had two duties: keep the temple fire lit (for she was goddess of the hearth,) and keep their legs closed.  Failure to do the former resulted in being whipped by a long leather strop; for the latter, the Vestal Virgin (think: Procul Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale”) would be wrapped with veils to muffle her crying and buried alive in a field outside of Rome by a wall.  Plutarch called this the most “sad and gloomy day.” In Scotland, in the ruins of an abbey, remains of a nun were found in a wall, too: bones collapsed in a habit, a bowl, the hardened puddle of wax from the candle. A wick.
 
Phallophobia (Fear of the Penis)
 
The other day, I saw a young girl in the middle of my street.  She was peeing like a man, looking at me over her shoulder, smirking, waiting for me to see the stream of ginger ale pouring down between her legs.  Hey girlie, I wanted to say, pulling her shirt at the breastbone, you want to see a monster pee?  Look outside your window tonight: I’ll be gripping the maple, squatting all over your back lawn.  A girl with a strap-on was nothing new to me, no, that wasn’t what enraged me.  It was how her friends stood away from her, laughing.  Clearly, in her group, she was the one who did things.
 
Ophidiophobia (Fear of Snakes)
 
Once you’ve seen a snake on the footpath, you see them everywhere: the long rattling seeds of the shivering locust tree, an old hose, the iron hook dangling from the car door handle, your friend’s arm in a black Danskin holding out a Granny Smith apple.  When I was a teen, I parked in a car with a brutal boy on the Lynn Marsh, by the GE.  We heard a hiss outside, and then another hiss: I said Snake! and he backhanded me in my mouth. After that, things changed. 

Copyright © 2017 Map Literary

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Jennifer Martelli’s debut poetry collection, The Uncanny Valley, was published in 2016 by Big Table Publishing Company. She is also the author of the chapbook, Apostrophe and the chapbook, After Bird, forthcoming from Grey Book Press. Her work has appeared in Thrush, [Pank], The Baltimore Review, The Heavy Feather Review, and The Pittsburgh Poetry Review. Jennifer Martelli has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net Prizes and is the recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant in Poetry. She is a book reviewer for Up the Staircase Quarterly, as well as a co-curator for The Mom Egg VOX Blog Folio. 

published by
The Department of English
College of Humanities & Social Sciences
The William Paterson University of New Jersey
Copyright  © 2012-2019 Map Literary
Map Literary

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