Map Literary: A Journal of Contemporary Writing and Art
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  • Poetry
    • Sherwood Anderson
    • Mark DeCarteret
    • Dennis Hinrichsen Poetry
    • Daniel Biegelson
    • Natan Last
    • Jim Daniels Poetry
    • Michael Chang
    • D E Steward
    • Benjamin Paloff Poetry
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  • Fiction
    • On Experimental Fiction
    • Mark Cassidy, "How I Met My Wife"
    • Emily Trachtenberg, "Plum"
    • Hector Donovan-Gonzalez
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    • 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


Vanessa Couto Johnson

The freed lunch

Why give you a fake cow
when I don't want to drink milk.

A real animal can arrive
between us.  Small

or far away.  Near buy,
gladly free.  My father at work

has hammered his finger.
Purpled.  He heats the tip

of a paperclip and presses
it into the nail.  Heal.


Unscrew your bronchitis.
In Ireland, a goat has

met a sheep and they made
a geep.  Raise like a lamb.


Braise and bravo.  Your fridge
temperamentally keeps.

What we make has a temperature.
Grapevine or bovine,

all becomes a fluid gossiping
about change and exchange.




The tabletop game

Where is the hippo
of hunger and infidelity?

I keep opening jars
and eating the stored

nuts inside them.
That is my story

and I am sticking
dried dates into it.

A grandfather lifts
the lid on a crystal

candy dish he has
already emptied.

Teeth do not roll
like marbles

but like something else.
As a child, when

I thought the word
"saliva," I salivated for

hours.  A bell in
my head.  A dog

in the corner of a yard
waiting for me

to know its trick.
And myself,

my jaws into
a bowl.




Observe

I put my nose into a glass.

Connoisseurs smell first.

Something brewed in the next
room.  The liquid in the dark.

A human shares his birthday
with a dove.  Foot of the table

is not a yard.  If the handshake

were an exercise.  Properly

or property, we possess
food in the mouth.

The young are open
to fed possibility.

I drink after you with

a question called thirst.





Picture
Vanessa Couto Johnson earned her MFA from Texas State University. She is listed as a Highly Commended Poet for the 2014 Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Little Patuxent Review, Eratio, Hot Metal Bridge, Word Riot, Gravel, Vector, and elsewhere. She runs treksift.com, blogs at meansofpoetry.com, and has a BA in both English and philosophy from Rice University.

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
    • 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