10th Annual Juried Reading: Kiki Petrosino

10th Annual Juried Reading Finalist

Kiki Petrosino

Kiki Petrosino graduated from the University of Virginia in 2001. She spent the next two years teaching English and Italian at an American boarding school in Lugano, Switzerland. Currently she is a graduate student in the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities (MAPH) at the University of Chicago where she is working on a manuscript of original poems tentatively titled "Star Silo." Next year, she will attend the Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa and begin working toward an MFA in poetry. She is fluent in English and Italian.

The Map Has Broken Into a Rash, and Now There Are Islands

The map had a fever which made it pull and pull its equators into a giant
hoop skirt that was good for growing tomatoes.
In Sicily a scarecrow cracked its groin and someone else resigned from bed.
Lights turned on and off. No one knew what to do about this.

Pretty soon the cartographers wheeled by on their Official Bicycles:
      "Well, bless me if those aren't islands. A whole sweaty ring of them."
Murphy was new to longitude and couldn't read the map.
      "Where's the belly? Why doesn't this have any hips?"

The map had Lyme Disease, syphilis, chancre sores and feline tuberculosis.
New islands appeared off the coast of Japan; islands were having islands.
Murphy said,
      "Encrustation is alluvial."
It took the cartographers five whole days of circling their compasses to buff
the map clean again. Then, on the sixth day, Madagascar reported a tiny bud of land
clinging to its ribs.
      "We will pull it out like a spring onion," the cartographers swore.
One of them had a tool for removing staples. It did look like a small and spicy hand.
      Snick. Snick. Click.
      "All done."

The map was furious. It plucked tomatoes from its hoop skirt and hurled them
at the cartographers, who mounted their Official Bicycles and pumped all the way home.
Every volcano between Egypt and Monterey erupted. Of course, this added several
new island chains
      (and one kitchen island to a brownstone in New York City).
Word reached the cartographers, sheltering in a crook of the atomic clock in Washington.
      "When will the terror end?" Murphy asked, darkening his voice like a newsman. The Chief Cartographer put his thumb on a magazine ad for two-tone lures and waxed string.
Then he called Murphy a pussy.