Map Literary: A Journal of Contemporary Writing and Art
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  • Archives
    • 2018 >
      • Poetry 2018 >
        • Carlos Hiraldo
        • Martin Ott
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      • Fiction 2018 >
        • Rebecca Pyle, "Winter Solstice"
        • Martin Rutley, "Job Offer on Seventh Heaven"
        • Matthew Baker, "Superhighway"
        • Matthew Serback, "How to Make a Boulder"
        • Pavle Radonic, "The Laboratory"
        • Arkor Kolubah, "A Touch of Comfort"
      • Nonfiction 2018 >
        • Scott Wordsman reviews Petter Lindgren
        • Alexander Clark, "Postdiluvian"
    • 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
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        • Charlie Moses, "Dear Friend"
        • Pamela Woolford, "This Is What Happened"
        • Jennifer Martelli, "Phobiacompendia"
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      • Fiction 2016 >
        • Loie Merritt, "The Edge of the Sea is a Strange and Beautiful Place"
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        • Mike Shepley, "Killing Symbols"
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        • Dan Gutstein, "Like Airplanes and Stars"
        • Kate Imbach, "Diamondland"
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        • Jeff Alessandrelli
        • Daniel Coudriet
        • Peter Leight
        • John Wells
        • Jenna Cardinale
        • Isabelle Shepherd
        • Michael Robins
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        • Bridget Sprouls
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        • Caroline Knox
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    • 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
Picture
Kevin Brown

Jack Talks Trade-In

My ball-joints have begun to break.
Engine whines at every stop
sign. My college car finally fading.

The door I once opened for Melissa,
then Julie, jams when I go to load
groceries. Any new car is an upgrade;

they’ve all gone global
positioning, telling me where
I am and where I am not

and where I could be. The interior smells
like a stereotype, like my father’s first
Ford, the only new car he could afford,
bought the year the factory
felt he was foreman

material, could move men
as well as parts to be put together 
down the line.

Everything here looks new,
though I know the sheen
will wither, the shellac of wax
will wane or chip before I leave

the lot, a woman’s voice repeating,
Recalculating.
Recalculating.
Recalculating.





Jack is Quick, Narrowly Avoids Death

I was almost hit by a hearse
this morning; it moved so fast,
must have believed

a funeral is a fire,
the body in the back the one way
to extinguish it, leave people relieved,

not grieved. If this were a scene in a movie,
a matinee my friends and I wanted to try
ten dollars on, we would leave with shaken

heads, so heavy-handed
we would demand our
disbelief back, talk about it over tacos, canned

caliente the soundtrack, a starter of
queso fundido so spicy it makes
the movie seem subtle--Okay, I get
it, he looks both ways, but death runs


him over regardless; Mike mutters,
It comes around the corner too
quickly, can’t predict


or expect it, catches him
unaware—before moving to more
important matters: mortgages

barely made; Bixby’s unsurprising
unemployment; the looming
layoff of the NBA, the legality

of its lockout, and what we will watch
instead. We leave in different
directions to collect our cars, stand
on separate street corners, wait one

second longer,
then two,

before stepping into the street.




Jack is Rudely Awakened

The four a.m. phone call comes
like a heart attack; my heart stops,
starts again. But I have not died,
nor has anyone I know,

as far as I know, a motel’s
malfunctioning phone, same
as the sink stopper with a slow leak,
a morning shave made more difficult.

No one knows the number
to tell me if death has come
as it does, like a four a.m. phone call
or like the long letters my seventh-grade

girlfriend used to write in the summers,
described every detail—the taste
and appearance of her paste-like
oatmeal or soggy, sugar-laden

cereal, the milk blue or brown,
or the kiss she gave a stuffed bear
named Bonzo, her fuzz-laden lips
only stopped moving when asleep.

I knew the endings of those letters 
before the beginning, knew before
I turned the twelfth or thirteenth

perfectly perforated page, the closing:
With love, if I was lucky;
otherwise, Sincerely.





Picture
Kevin Brown is a Professor at Lee University.  He has one book of poetry, Exit Lines (Plain View Press, 2009) and two chapbooks: Abecedarium (Finishing Line Press, 2011) and Holy Days: Poems (winner of Split Oak Press Chapbook Contest, 2011).  He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again (Wipf and Stock, 2012), and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories:  Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels (Kennesaw State University Press, 2012).  He received his MFA from Murray State University.

published by
The Department of English
College of Humanities & Social Sciences
The William Paterson University of New Jersey
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