The Wake

I sit on the roof, outside my window
on the second floor of my house
smoking hookah and watching the Bunge
plunge into the sunset.The smoke ring sits gently with the parked
letters
of the spray can’s spark,
flutter me an antidote“A T T A K T H E G L O B E” Why not take the globe and push it a little
down a hill, maybe give it a kiss with a few toes
and a nimble hello with the passing stones.
Maybe we could wash it with sweet liquor
and watch as the little mountains grow sicker
and …

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It’s an everything!
And for that many people don’t reside well within it
for that many people reside well in certain tides
of mildew, others soft linen, and others the whip of the
arid cries of locusts to the stalk
the locust to the stalk
the locust to the stalk is not a certain anything
it is an everything
that’s what makes the stalk rot.What’s wrong with gutting the children for their mother’s milk?
What’s wrong with curdling the skin that doesn’t fit in
with the smoke stacks, or the mercury harbor, the uranium river,
what’s wrong with curdling the …

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“War is the health of the state”
- Randolph BourneRemember sitting in AP Government
Remember the New York Times
Remember the cover
of the
cover of the
cover of the New York Times
splayed with ideas
on 1% doctrines
where it’s ok when one feels the slightest bit threatenedto plow homes with sweet
depleted uranium?Unaccounted—does a child scream
when nothing is around to listen
except for the dust settling under
the once-terrace, now splayed heap
of arms and feet and vaporized concrete?Eugene Debs went to jail
under accusation
of obstructing the World War“The master class has
always
declared …

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What scares them most is
That NOTHING HAPPENS!
They are ready
For DISTURBANCES.
They have machine guns
And soldiers,
But this SMILING SILENCE
Is uncanny.
- AniseI want to talk against this police state
a little bit
while the onslaught by the L.A.P.D.
on immigrant rights protestors
are still swollen
and red from the welts
of the rubber bullets flying in crowds of women
and children
and the elderly
and reporters
in an act of aggression
towards those redressing their grievances

it was not always this way.In 1919, a General Strike Committee
set the city of …

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Minn. — If you’re from the Midwest and it doesn’t matter where, say shh. Say shh. If you can drink tap water and breath the air, say shh. Say shh …Roam if you must, but come home when you’ve seen enough. Holla Minnesnowtans. That salutation took a while; please forgive me. Oh, and you probably wanna go on a month-long walk with me to D.C. With this whole war going on, it’s surely a month that will go down in history. Why not write the history – live the history. If you wanna come, meet me at Northrop Mall on …

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While as far as I can tell there is no shortage of shortages (I’m here all night, folks) in this country, I am much more concerned with the qualities we seem to lack as a society than how much oil we’ve sucked out of the corpses of so much endangered Alaskan wildlife.There’s a shortage on truth out there, my fine-feathered friends. No one is honest with anyone else anymore. Not just bad lies like, “I’m not cheating on you,” or “Cut the blue wire or we all die,” but white lies too. I personally have gone entire weeks with food …

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I’ve seen games of hopscotch that were manlier than football. God, with those constant interruptions of play, coaches, apparently having seen Seinfeld, covering their faces while barking out orders–and pause now for station identification. It’s amazing to me how anyone has ever watched, played in, or admired an entire game of football. Seriously, why is it that, in our boring country, football is held as the shining pinnacle of masculinity? The players are draped head to toe in protective padding–why don’t they just wear bubble-boy suits for when they bump into each other?Now the real football, what we Americans call …

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Panda Bear - Person Pitch

Panda Bear, whose real name is Noah Lennox, recently lost his father. The result was Young Prayer an album of soft clapping and wailing mourning, as he fights through his loss with music. “Where are you?” are some of the only discernable words, but if you listen closely, you can put together the phrase, “This is how I’ll talk to you.” The result is an album that is like dark magic, a musical limbo and oddly soothing sound …

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Matt Jennings, sibling of acclaimed singer/songwriter Mason Jennings, moved from Pittsburgh to Minneapolis in high school to play in his brother’s band. His stint as the bassist, and then drummer, didn’t last long. He opted instead to go back to school; upon graduation, he found himself traveling the world. He studied Spanish in Mexico, and then spent some time teaching English in South China and Thailand. When he returned home, he assembled a band and self-released his debut, Two Become One, in the summer of 2005. Having spent time playing in the different areas of his travel, Jennings’ guitar playing …

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Same old story, right? Behind a whirlwind of hype and accolades (recently named NME’s Best New Band), these four blokes from the U.K. released their debut album (Myths of the Near Future) on January 29th and are already off on world tours. They’ve even been assigned to and/or accredited with their own genre of music, “new rave.” Having only heard a handful of songs, and though I enjoyed them all thoroughly, I was unsure of what to expect. Would they be as good as advertised (ala Arctic Monkeys, Bloc Party, The Libertines, and Kasabian) or were they merely another over-hyped …

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Even with all of our intricately pompous systems of government and technological advancements, certain aspects of human nature remain stubbornly primitive. Take, for example, our fear of and disdain for the unknown. The Wiccan Church of Minnesota is in every way as valid a religious organization as Hillel or Bethlehem Covenant; however, because most people know little about the Pagan tradition, they assume paganism to be something funny at best, or something very dangerous at worst. On April 14th I attended WiC-CoN, an event hosted by The Wiccan Church of Minnesota, and had the privilege to gain a small amount …

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A decade after Spice World, Girl Power is raised from its glittery grave.Blonde Redhead, a unique three piece from New York City, may have been the big name on the bill April 15th at First Avenue, but the evening’s success was due in larger part to a wisely selected opener in Midnight Movies. Their equally intransient sounds set a relaxed mood which held strong for the duration of the evening. Another common ground was found in female front women. As captivating as Blonde Redhead’s Kazu Makino was Midnight Movies’ Gena Olivier. Either way, I’d score this as one successful evening …

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The last time I rode a bicycle before today, I remember,
this was a summer ago, as I remember it,
a summer ago as I remember, I rode a bicycle through photographs
in the Northrop Mall, as I remember it,
riding through photographs on Northrop Mall
posing motion for brochure catalogues, as I remember it,
while I ride, as I remember the contrasts
of the overcast today to the picaresque under the Boynton Clock Tower
to the skin grafts beside the Stone Arch
and the mad dash to the Alumni Center
for fake …

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Concerning String Cheese
Sweat has made my hair coarse and wiry. The ink-stained 100% cotton t-shirt feels like a burlap sack on my exhausted body. I just returned from a day working at an industrial screen printing factory. Between stacking empty bottles inside boxes and resisting the thought that, through a horrible series of events, this could end up being my life, my entire being is tired. I need to take a shower, but I don’t have the energy. Instead I shamble over to the couch and shift my weight so that I fall into …

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Communication in the U.S. today is a problem. Groups of people have trouble communicating with other groups that they work with. One student group is changing that. “Through this group, students learn to break down preconceived notions of other professions and can even become friends,” says Tracy Hanson, student president of CLARION.The student group CLARION was formed in 2002 by two students who wanted a way for medical students and students in public health, pharmacy and nursing to connect. They believed that if students from different fields could find a way to come together, it would make it …

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