Map Literary: A Journal of Contemporary Writing and Art
  • About
    • Masthead
    • Submissions
    • Rachel Wetzsteon Chapbook Award
    • NJ High School Writing Contest
    • In Print
    • Subscribe
    • Links
    • Internship Opportunity
    • WPU MFA
  • Poetry
    • 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
    • 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
Picture


Henry Israeli

THE BOOK OF FIXED STARS

In place of sleep, a long, sedulous sigh.

In place of comfort, a handful of fish entrails.

In place of slaughter, a gurgling, wet orifice.

What takes the place of joy
, al-Sufi asks,
but no one volunteers. Al-Sufi observes
the bloody gash of the ecliptic plane,
the path on which the pilgrim sun travels yearly,
and thinks, when the prophet has a tantrum
he is sent to his room where he cuts himself.

Al-Sufi contemplates the large Magellanic Cloud

while his patron, the Emir, vanquishes neighboring Mesopotamia.

When he lays his head on an astrolabe, he dreams

of a galaxy trapped inside a dog’s mouth,

which the dog will not let go of until a gramophone

is placed next to him. When he releases it,

it spins down the tornado-shaped cone,

emerging in the form of a song.
So that’s what dogs are for
, he notes.

When, the next day, he recalls his dream,

the cat looks at him skeptically, which, to be fair,
is how the cat always looks at him.




A DEVILISH MERCY

A hot needle brush inside the chest.
The feeling of being naked when clothed.

A broken egg. An oopsadazy.  A lofty poppy
hunched over, letting loose a sigh.

So much we were never meant to see…
The houses can’t stand to be looked at.

At night they burrow into the ground.






Picture
Henry Israeli’s poetry collections include New Messiahs (Four Way Books: 2002), Praying to the Black Cat (Del Sol: 2010), and god’s breath hovering across the waters, forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2016. He is the translator of Fresco: the Selected Poetry of Luljeta Lleshanaku (New Directions: 2002), Child of Nature (New Directions: 2010), and Haywire: New and Selected Poems (Bloodaxe, 2011). He has been awarded fellowship grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Canada Council on the Arts, and elsewhere.

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

Promote Your Page Too
Free E-Subscription
Callaloo: African Arts
On Innovative Fiction
Huizache: Latino Lit
Veterans Writing
Asian Writers
Picture
  • About
    • Masthead
    • Submissions
    • Rachel Wetzsteon Chapbook Award
    • NJ High School Writing Contest
    • In Print
    • Subscribe
    • Links
    • Internship Opportunity
    • WPU MFA
  • Poetry
    • 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
    • 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