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
    • 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
Picture

Maureen Thorson


Think Fast
​

Which way is the wind blowing?
 
                        Like the dodo-birds, it exits stage left.
 
Where is the key?
 
                        While lake, white clouds, gray hills.
 
Who has the power?
 
                        A green serpent high in the branches of a dead, branchless tree, to which an
                        oversized ear is stuck like a jewel.
 
When will the light break?
 
                        When the skeleton kneels on its book.
 
Why are the horses skittish?
 
                        The alpinists descend.
 
How will the light fall?
 
                        Away from the skeleton with its birdhouse skull.
 
What is the vengeance of Mars?
 
                        Looks like a junco with a mockingbird’s pert tail and the feathery breeches of a hawk.
​                        Nothing real, in other words. Nothing you need pay mind.



​The Latin Name Means “Rummaging Tongue”

Dark butterfly, I’ve got a bone to pick with you.
Except you don’t have bones,
only a candy-slick exoskeleton. Look--
 
I could call you just another chaos cutie,
your hardly-there wingflaps seeding hurricanes,
your waggly antennae texting all my bad exes:
 
Come home. But we both know you’re special,
baby, special as an ex the thought of whom,
years later, makes me make fists, punching shame.
 
Despair, if I weren’t unreasoned by your mirrored eyes,
it would be easy to make a specimen of you--
you’re swollen so fat on my daylights you can barely fly.
 
With pins I’d fix your thorax through. Paste a label
above your snout. Name, date, location of capture.
And a warning: Don’t Let This Thing Out.



Scarlet Letters

​I wonder,
when I find
my ragebonnet’s
come awry--
 
were you
taught,
as I was,
to embroider?
 
To draw
bright floss
across
a square
 
of cambric,
held taut
in hoops
of crimson plastic?
 
I was only five,
you know,
when I learned
good seams
 
are invisible,
but monograms
are meant
to show,
 
their initials
rampant
as heraldic lions.
Watch me
 
pick them out
in fierce metallics,
knot
flinty sequins
 
to dot each I.
Here’s an appliqué
worth the wonder:
there’s power
 
in a name,
be it endearment
or imprecation,
if you claim
 
it for your own.
Every name they call you,
you can sew--
drastic, tragic
 
exclamations
writ in stitches
chained
and whipped,
 
perverse, perhaps,
but proud.
So emblazoned,
let your very clothes
 
proclaim you,
unlovely, fractious.
Write it truly.
Lose the shame.


Copyright © February 2019 Maureen Thorson

Picture
Maureen Thorson is the author of two collections of poetry, “My Resignation” (Shearsman Books 2014) and “Applies to Oranges” (Ugly Duckling Presse 2011). Her latest chapbook, “The Woman, The Mirror, The Eye,” was published by Bloof Books in 2015. She lives in Falmouth, Maine, where she acts as personal servant to an extremely grouchy cat. Visit her at maureenthorson.com. 
​

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
    • 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