Map Literary: A Journal of Contemporary Writing and Art
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    • Melissa Wiley, "Barbed Wire Fence"
    • Ashley Wilkinson, "fractional distillation"
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Picture
Genevieve Kaplan

Fresh meat must be had on an occasion¹ 

As fur flown in the driveway describes, acquisition is easy.
For coyotes, or crows squawking, or wheeling at a raptor in flight. 
The gestures are natural. 
Listen: tiny mincing bats find live bait without exertion. 
One pounces on eye-shine, goes deep in the forest in the quake of outdoors, 
             hopes what stares back will be prey and moves like an animal. 
Or fish would do, though cold, and there are streams. 
Or one could sit and wait for a small bear—for it—with pointed sticks. 

An evening meal provides position for staring over lowlands. 
Seeing lights in the homes there and knowing this once that one is leaving 
            or has left behind. 
 






¹ One does desire it.


(I’m) seated, or imagining

the clicking wire, the cricket (who escapes. who gets 
           caught) preparing for some ceremony

under the white tent, in the tall grass, determined 
           by the gravel-tossed plastic sheeting, actually

(within the short-logged fence. the pre-planned benches)
           unable to distinguish music from wind, what comes on

from beyond. seated, or imagining (imaginary) that one 
           (if not the other) will end, will move along, has 

gone now. the gravel path gives enough (soft for
           prints, slogging through, as ocean is related 

to pine, that strong determined smell). of course
           there’s sun here. it’s been made. the chirping developed 

and admired. placed, seeking its own disturbance, its method
           my entry (and the twig falls. the loped ear droops)




Sifting through the air (motes, sinking down)

the dark reflects, lets them 
become their opposite. a light 
flashes by, a bird
in the evening, a leaf hanging 
by one stem. (what kind
of bird is it whose neck 
rests near its shoulders, what kind
of ground-pecking grouse?
) sifting 
the seeds and kernels through 
the fallen leaves. wandering down 
among them. o the lights of the sky. 
o the calm above the roof. o 
the latest gesture (o forgiveness. 
o understanding.
) if we wait for the sun
the course of light, the placement 
of your face near the glass. or 
the carcasses littering (o’er)
the sill. as close as anyone 
is the outline of the lifetime of the fence. 
the silhouette reaching 
like fingernails in the (darkening) 
sky. sly hands 
of the neighbors, drifting nothing 
but unkempt leaves against 
the sky. I don’t know what sparks there 
(in my eye, or past it), I don’t know 
the stripe is the same, the scalloped 
edges, fine-features, their faces bland. 
or their faces out of the dark shifting 
shifting away at the break of it. the smaller flying 
bodies (or I’d never say 
they’d influence me (unduly)).




A western

The bulk of a mountain, bare atop. 
Slopes become granite and dirts only linger among the erratics. 
Boulders that heat, too, in the sun, for a second. 
Look for the thing to be found in the rock, among the rock, a vein. 
Spilt gold of possibility, escaping, outsmarting, riding up on an unpainted horse. 
And crowing about it.
Hooves among shards, foundering and kicking up along the way.




Our nights were never cold

and they were always still
we decided to live as best we could 
within them and to think up ways
to fill them laying heads on rocks and waning
air imagining seas to the distance

ride off and they ride off and we ride off
alone on the plain in that wind
do you hear 
something it’s the birds 

when we go into lands
and their heat and their danger 
we remember being 
afraid in a house differs rightly 
from sleeping bold and safe 
within the horses and the fire 
knowing already possibilities for escape 
and stand to their 
rises and falls for neighbors only animals
when we go to the desert so we gather in





Picture
Genevieve Kaplan is the author of In the ice house (Red Hen Press, 2009) and settings for these scenes (Convulsive Editions, 2013). Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in a variety of print and online journals; recent work can be found in word for/word, H_NGM_N, Poecology, and Galatea Resurrects.

published by
The Department of English
College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences
The William Paterson University of New Jersey
Copyright © 2012-2022 Map Literary
Map Literary

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  • About
    • Masthead
    • Submissions
    • Rachel Wetzsteon Chapbook Award
    • NJ High School Writing Contest
    • In Print
    • Subscribe
    • Links
    • Internship Opportunity
    • WPU MFA
  • Poetry
    • Richard Ryal
    • Sherwood Anderson
    • Mark DeCarteret
    • Dennis Hinrichsen Poetry
    • Daniel Biegelson
    • Natan Last
    • Jim Daniels Poetry
    • Michael Chang
    • D E Steward
    • Benjamin Paloff Poetry
    • David Dodd Lee
    • Isabelle Doyle
    • Kathleen Heil
    • Leonard Kress
    • Lauren Tess
    • Cesca Janece Waterfield
    • Billy Cancel Poetry
    • Scott Minar
    • Greg Glazner
    • Bruce McRae
    • Maureen Thorson
  • Fiction
    • On Experimental Fiction
    • Mark Cassidy, "How I Met My Wife"
    • Emily Trachtenberg, "Plum"
    • Hector Donovan-Gonzalez
    • Christopher Linforth, "Zia"
    • Jenessa Abrams, "You Never Wish That Upon Anyone"
    • Eros Livieratos, "On Feeling"
    • Halsted M. Bernard, "Your Hands"
    • Justin Meckes, "The Gash"
    • Reb Livingston, from "Bombyonder"
    • Craig Foltz, "Without Stigma"
  • Nonfiction
    • Martha Wiseman, "Loose Ends"
    • Jan Jolly, "Through My Father's Glasses"
    • Kristina Moriconi, "Still Looking"
    • Wm. Anthony Connolly, "IGY"
    • Cal Freeman, "Loosestrife"
    • W.F. Lantry, "The Strange Beauty of the Unfamiliar"
    • Michael Roloff, "Accretion"
    • Andrew Sunshine, "John Hancock's John Hancock"
    • Diane Payne, "3 micro memoirs"
    • Luc Sante, "Flesh and Bone"
    • Isobel O'Hare, "Failure: A Love Letter"
    • Melissa Wiley, "Barbed Wire Fence"
    • Ashley Wilkinson, "fractional distillation"
  • Art