Shattered Hours, by Gerry LaFemina

is a small press established in 1978 by poet and editor Judith Kerman. We specialize in contemporary literature, especially poetry and works that straddle conventional categories: Great Lakes, women, Caribbean, translations, science fiction poetry, recent immigrant experience, Judaica. Publications are in both chapbook and trade paperback formats.

The Complex Task of Refolding an Open Map

by Gerry LaFemina

I understand scars, the pair
on your leg, long and linear— one above your left knee, the other
just below. Rivers on your skin map.

I imagine all the wounds I might
have received, a life in which I resist
the man who forced me, at seven,
to discover the contours of his cock.
A knife in his left hand, the right
imitating a lover's against my cheek.
I knew the valleys a blade could cut.

And of the battles outside a pool hall
in my youth, I recall, now, every near miss
or quick dodge as a hit, a move
too slow.

So many islands exist
because volcanoes vomit
lava landscapes. Continental drift:
a ripping of land masses.
Cartographers understand this violence
of topography; how maps change,
daily victims of climate and time.

We live in a small town, Manhattan.
Outside, rain creates potholes.
I unfold a photo album:
an atlas of you at all ages, a history
of a strange land, always
getting stranger. While you sleep,
I'm awake charting landscapes
that'll be outdated by dawn.
You ask what I do. I make maps.