The Romans’ Map to Heaven – Christina Ungermann

February 18, 2026

–

Possession I

 
Anna spends her days in the empty city
Where the monster lives
Tending to him

In the empty subway
spilling out
groceries on the ground

Como la bruja

Bile blood phlegm
Derretiendo

–
The Romans’ Map to Heaven

 
Spent a year without a brain
made out of tin you remember flying thin as a shock-wave not quite
fitting in two.
Night quiet like an undercover informant
mezcal, nightshade never visiting.
Wandering sailor, androgyne mirror,
the wizard gave you courage but no gumption
and yet still homeless you live
one daydream to the next, graveyard-digger shift
despairing—the game is not
one you understand

Spent a year collecting thoughts,
timing reactions
body like water, mind—drawn
corn on the cob. A diagram not so easily understood
as a doctor’s notebook which labels and marks:
good pliant cells good pliant double helixes.
Boil down the chicken breast and it is
matter, matter like stone
in the graveyard
housing its former clientele

Cheeky aren’t you?
Bright, pretty as an alarm bell.
Doomed to sit on the floor,
heartless, mindless,
friend to all
until you leave

–

Possession II

 
living in a city where everyone wants to be famous
can be unspeakably lonely and it is painful when your nails grow back

an ostrich egg takes two hours to boil
enough time to
circle the restaurant a hundred times
let the
chicken breast
sit out in the hot sun,
gather flies

–

Sex

 
i.
Sex changes
You cannot talk people into it
Or out of it

ii.
Sex begets change
When a caterpillar changes into a butterfly
It eats itself to death

iii.
The pool was freezing
We went in