Map Literary: A Journal of Contemporary Writing and Art
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  • Poetry
    • Fiona Lu
    • Sunday T. Saheed
    • Harley Chapman
    • 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

Poetry Contest for New Jersey High School Students
Winner & Honorable Mentions Announcement
We are happy to announce the winner and two honorable mentions for our first annual contest. Assisted by Map Literary staff, the contest judge -- Howard Steng -- is a high school English teacher who has served as an Adjunct Professor of Taijiquan and writing. His received his undergraduate degree in English with honors from Temple University and a permanent teaching certificate from from the State of New Jersey at Montclair State University. Later, Howard went on to complete a MA and MFA from William Paterson University. Howard is currently the studio manager at the Warwick Pottery Studio in Warwick, NY where he is developing his own line of clay works and is working on a third collection of poetic works, Imagination Interrupted: Poems from the Pandemic. 

And the winning poem is...
​

"Portrait of Girl as Monkey King" by Heather Qin

I, too, could turn into seventy-two different things. 
This is freedom, unfiltered. Boy running down 
the splintered street, plowing through fruit stands, shooting 
 
squirrels out of trees. I didn’t check for cars before I crossed  
the street. I cleaved through the night with streetlights shouting 
my name, courage bursting like a fistful of flowers. Street  
 
camera illuminating my face, I stuck my tongue out and  
laughed and laughed. My greatest ambition was to turn 
meteorite in retrograde, barreling toward infinity—then, girls will 
 
be girls, unafraid of touch. I spray-painted the church  
with graffiti as I walked a girl home, and she clutched  
my arm like a searchlight, afraid of the dark. I, too, used to be 
 
afraid, whittling night down to its ghosts. Another time I played 
god, filled the new church in town, prayers lining my teeth gold. Tongue 
furnished with worship. When a man prayed for good harvest, I applauded 
 
his patience, watching his faith grow to outlast the winter. So it would 
separate my body from desire. I grew accustomed 
to falsetto: living beyond my means. The night I came home without 
 
costume, I searched my face for blood. My accent sheathing  
its dull blade: girl only useful when found. 


​
Picture
Heather Qin (she/her) is a high school junior from New Jersey. Her work has been recognized by the New York Times, Columbia College Chicago, and Hollins University, and can be found or forthcoming in Sine Theta Magazine, Pidgeonholes, and Diode, among others. She is an alumni of the Iowa Young Writers' Studio, an incoming mentee at the Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship, and edits for her school newspaper and literary magazine. Besides writing, Heather loves classical music, reading, and watching soccer games.



​
Honorable Mentions:

​

"Haraboji in the backyard" by Gia Shin

& now Haraboji is hunched over in the backyard planting 
         perilla leaves. His translucent 
                                skin hangs loosely over bone, rib juts out 
from tattered white tank, & ugly purple crocs 
          swallow his feet. Purple crocuses 
                    stain the wrong side of his face. I am 
proving 
          to Haraboji I am a True American  
                    Girl. I am a sparkly cheerleader &  
learned English conjugations from scratch & I don’t plant perilla leaves-- 
           I don’t even eat perilla. 
                      I stop speaking to Haraboji because the radioactive 
purple is too pissed to handle. The splotch  
           on his face is God’s angry doing. 
                      & now, years later, our leaves are withered & Haraboji is uprooted  
from this American soil & I don’t answer his evergreen calls. 
          Sometimes, I wish my Fenty-coated lips 
                     could string together an apology for Haraboji 
but they’re too busy swallowing 
         the shrieks of white boys. 

​
Picture
Gia Shin (she/her) is a high school senior from Tenafly, New Jersey. Her works have been recognized by The Incandescent Review and the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards as an American Voices Nominee. She has attended the Iowa Young Writers Studio, Kenyon Young Writers Workshop, Princeton Hyphens Collective, and Kelly Writers House. Gia is also the Co-Editor-in-Chief of her school newspaper and Co-Editor of her school’s literary magazine.


​

​
​"If New York City was a gas fire" by Mikayla Smith
​

I wouldn’t be a cool shade of blue.

I wouldn’t be able to bleed
and make a good Bloody Mary,
or sit in Joe’s Pizza in azure smoke
and live or die for the copper
taste of penniless lips
as they silently shiver outside.

I am not a cool girl blue–
a “see you later,” “get over it” shade
of Columbus Ave’s smooth jazz and poetry.

I am not cool ‘Girl Blue.’
I can look and see the Curacao
at Baby’s All Right, but the blue
I feel is rotten, gooey and bone-deep.

There are no songs
about being an unproductive,
rocky shoreline in Newport
smack in the middle of hellfire paradise–

There are no songs for funeral dress
and pen-breaking, sickly shades
of a muddy small-town Morris County blue
that’s really more dirty than sweet
and salty like hyacinths.

If I could bottle up New York City
I’d sip it like black coffee–
but I’ve never been cool enough
to skip milk and sugar.

If New York City was golden,
I’d be a fake gold medalist
pleading with the embassy of
whatever country, desperately
wanting to swim laps in the big-girl pool,

knowing it’s pointless–
because if New York City was a gas fire,

I wouldn’t be a cool shade of blue.
​

Picture
Mikayla Smith is a Senior at Kinnelon High School in Kinnelon, NJ, and will be studying Creative Writing at Connecticut College next fall. She is an avid member of her school's Gay-Straight Alliance and frequently stirs the pot in casual conversation. Her favorite activities include writing poetry, making people uncomfortable, and gossiping with her mother. Her favorite writers are Sylvia Plath and Donna Tartt; she identifies with spunky women. Mikayla can be seen reading The Secret History at disturbing and often inappropriate times of the day. She enjoys writing about baseball, relationships that miserably failed, and warrior nuns. 




Again, we want to thank everyone for participating! We had such a big turnout! 

Be sure to stay tuned for next year's writing contest – in short fiction.

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
    • Internship Opportunity
    • Links
    • WPU MFA
  • Poetry
    • Fiona Lu
    • Sunday T. Saheed
    • Harley Chapman
    • 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