Map Literary: A Journal of Contemporary Writing and Art
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      • Poetry 2018 >
        • Carlos Hiraldo
        • Martin Ott
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      • Fiction 2018 >
        • Rebecca Pyle, "Winter Solstice"
        • Martin Rutley, "Job Offer on Seventh Heaven"
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        • Matthew Serback, "How to Make a Boulder"
        • Pavle Radonic, "The Laboratory"
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        • Scott Wordsman reviews Petter Lindgren
        • Alexander Clark, "Postdiluvian"
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      • 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"
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      • Fiction 2016 >
        • Loie Merritt, "The Edge of the Sea is a Strange and Beautiful Place"
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        • Kate Imbach, "Diamondland"
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        • Jeff Alessandrelli
        • Daniel Coudriet
        • Peter Leight
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    • 2015 >
      • Poetry 2015 >
        • Adam Clay
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        • 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
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      • 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

MARK DECARTERET

Nature Show as a Sacred Act

Light dwindling like it does when the wind
smells of elm-leaf slowly drawing toward yellow,
the old man imagines lobbing a bottle--
the tint of some fabled sky, far-off sea,
into the space where a loon calls
off-beat with his breath, before trying
to bow to the fits of spray, cold,
the oft-rapping, stiffening sails, of the boats 
as if it the start of something near sacred
like those hosts with their whispered narrations 
who’ve been pressing for sainthood since the 70’s.
 
But let’s stop before we get carried away--
the lips forming around sentiment or even
dining on the salt that outlasted most of what’s
passed for a meaningful phrase or a kiss,
and get back onto the step where he’s petting
a lost cat or stalled over a third glass of wine
or better yet, turn our sights to where the alewife
keep filing up ladders, all knife-glint and factual,
and some osprey, dumbstruck by its luck,
takes one more commercial up on its offer,
poses, for yet another of its followers. 

​ 

Men as Enemies of Birds

Over the speaker we hear the wood stork--
its legs, swizzle-stuck, eyes, burnt-cork black,
neck, this high school machine-shop mishap,
 
as it chokes on a billion years of sugar crops, chaw  
with nary a bucket of water to be straw-sucked.
What wasn’t thawed on Formica for me or
 
morphed into a hat for you, has been turned inside-
out and mounted, posed as if nothing is happening.  
Here, buttons do everything but ad lib, see us
 
out towards the deck’s stenciled dribble and scat,
where no doubt all these sawdust-fed bodies
will be sung a ways into the field, resurrected.
 
The sky is first gun barrel then flask-glint--
later, snake-scales and lastly, can-top or tinsel. 
And I regret now not stopping at the Tram Mart,
 
not arming myself with more minutes and breath mints.
You observe the same regret but are logging it “SHAME--
a mesh-like sensation of loss that doubles as soul.”
 
A pick-up truck backs up to an airbrushed shrub,
dropping off tubs of artillery and sport drinks.
And another eco-safari van is idling in the lot.
 
Trees not from these parts are strapped in,
plastic tabs where there leaves had been.
And moss, the color of meat cooked well done,
 
hangs like streamers.  Some, copper, like chains.
I’m asked to play the role of a trapper, you, a parrot.
Things we didn’t think interactive are now cutting us,
 
making it difficult to tuck back our hair, take in air.
A heron, stucco-white, tidies up its display case.
It gets by on “a diet of tide-sounds and saddest of scripts--
 
those most silent of vowels like its italicized essing-
out through the algae, wings forever at-a-loss.”
I can only finger its history.  You, its Day-Glo’d disfiguring.   

​                                                  
Copyright © November 2017 Map Literary and Mark DeCarteret

Picture
Mark DeCarteret has appeared next to Charles Bukowski in a lo-fi fold out, Pope John Paul II in a high test collection of Catholic poetry, Billy Collins in an Italian fashion coffee table book, and Mary Oliver in a 3785 page pirated anthology.



published by
The Department of English
College of Humanities & Social Sciences
The William Paterson University of New Jersey
Copyright  © 2012-2021 Map Literary
Map Literary

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