Map Literary: A Journal of Contemporary Writing and Art
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  • Archives
    • 2018 >
      • Poetry 2018 >
        • Carlos Hiraldo
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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"
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        • 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
      • 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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        • 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
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Robert D Vivian

Just After Rain
 

Just after rain hours before dawn a moth flutters against the screen wanting to come in and you and the moth slowly turn into water as you listen and hear the trees dripping just after rain in beads that fall with reverence before the dew comes as another shade of water lighter than the smoke of what went out in your heart long ago, and it’s your heart that listens, that hears beyond sound and the power to name, your heart that wants to know what to do with this tenderness, this trembling that presages all caresses and the night air so soft coming through the window just after rain as the moon appears behind the breath of trailing cirrus, bright surprise and chalk of wonder, another sigh, another whisper late at night just after rain and you listen for the flowers holding their bells and trumpets in rapt abeyance for day’s commencement in shining, little instruments, little strings waiting to turn sunlight into blossoms, into symphony and just after rain you think of dying, of fading away to pure spirit or smoke and dying after rain like a dark doorway with no keyhole or door jamb, no door even, intimation of door like a candle flame that beckons you to greater silence and just after rain the one lying beside you lost in dreams, soporific, in another world dreams choose as chamber-most to spirits, spirits which are everywhere and always though you need to be a sleeping child again to feel them just after rain and the world washed clean again for the power and the glory and the mercy that is listening and not knowing, that is this hush of stillness just after rain where you dwell in blessed simplicity, also listening, also audition for what would raise you up to starlight in the brightness that beseeches asking you to leave your skin behind, not duty bound or correctional but oracular, sweet utterance that can only spoken in listening just after rain and just after midnight, just when you felt you could not keep going, could not quell the ache that resides somewhere in your body where the truth of every longing lives, just after rain when you were sure you did not have anything left to give, when you thought it was over, when you thought you were old and felt the dark gates closing, when the one you lost and the one you love isn’t coming back and no way to gainsay beloved’s departure, when longing was your tattered coat and longing was your ticket to nowhere, when hush was a command and not an invitation, when starlight again so bright casts its many pins into a darkness without measure, only dark, only night and yourself listening just after rain which will somehow save you, showering miracle unbearable to fathom because it is bottomless and partakes of the vastness that makes all here and there possible, via negativa also bounty and deliverance, door-like opening that is no door and no room just after rain, and rain itself that fell like silenced voices moments ago and the wind in the trees to tell the rain not to forsake their growing leaves and branches, the viscous sap within whose lifeblood is shot-through with forever and the spiraling rings of years, rain in the forecast and rain a way to foretell events to come, rain foremost on farmers’ minds like a haunting dream of water they can’t get shut of, just after rain and the light of one candle, one consciousness that is yours connected to all others everywhere in the world, just after rain in Bangladesh and just after rain in Omaha steaming off the cement streets downtown on Farnham Street and just after rain in Moscow near the Orthodox churches and just after rain in Singapore, a brief shower that ended around 2:00 a.m. somewhere in Montana and Phoenix dying of thirst, all the gullies and arroyos outside of town close to flooding and desert flowers suddenly blooming even as they drown and just after rain in foggy London, in Bravaria, Uganda, on a front porch in Alabama and John Coltrane playing “After The Rain,” which shimmers in recording, in after echo whose prominence is prayer incarnate in sound, in water, in all this falling, in the love that will not end and the love that weeps privately in a room anywhere, professional mourners or first-time amateurs, their hearts broken like bread that’s been baked in a stone oven, needing the weeping to soften and become wheat again, waving in a field in Kansas with windmills turning clockwise just after rain before another rain sweeps in.

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Robert D Vivian is the author of The Tall Grass Trilogy, Water And Abandon, and two collections of meditative essays, Cold Snap As Yearning and The Least Cricket Of Evening. He's currently at work on a collection of dervish essays.


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