The Wake

Do Not Enter
Do Not Enter
Do Not Enter
interstates, rail lines and this
river of locks are containment
incarnate.
Do Not Enter! on your own volition.

Corpus:
Where exploring the interior of the battle scared tree
in the park near Franklin Avenue
injects life after the lightning strike.

Where highways do not
lead to my city’s heart.
They pump madness
molasses
leaving soupy trails
of purple and red through the drain pipes
and stick
with the road searing sunlight.

These river flats are not just scenery,
but a landscape where homes used to be
denied
the fertile soil from the Spring
floods to feed the gardens for the Bohemian families
flattened via eminent domain circa
May 24th, 1923.

And every steaming automobile and crane
rolls over our front yard—
the buried tricycle
once a sandbox now a barge landing.
What arteries and veins could carry the nourishment
of a stomach
when each pathway slices
a little more of the heart?

Palimpsest:
How many lie here
[There …

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Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design and end of government, viz. Freedom and security. And however our eyes may be dazzled with show, or our ears deceived by sound; however prejudice may warp our wills, or interest darken our understanding, the simple voice of nature and reason will say, ’tis right.
- Thomas Paine

Change does not occur in your living room
with popcorn
and a united vision of dialectic
dishonesty from t a l k i
n
g h e a d s.

Change does not occur on your privatized
lawns of No …

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It is dangerous to leave written that which is badly written. A chance word, upon paper, may destroy the world. Watch carefully and erase, while the power is still yours, I say to myself, for all that is put down, once it escapes, may rot its way into a thousand minds, the corn become a black smut, and all libraries, of necessity, be burned to the ground as a consequence.
- William Carlos Williams, Paterson: Book III

And
do not contend to know the answers, you! who sits there suffocating
on your seat cushion. How can you possibly know?
Shut
up
and be still. That film over your eyes is not a glaze as some say. That is just …

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Photo by Brian Aldrich

The fireworks crash, scattering between the city skyline and the river. It is the Fourth of July, 2007. There’s much excitement—the poetry spills in from the Mississippi river as it negotiates its way beyond the Army Corps of Engineers’ marvel of locks and cement waterfalls. This is the moment when Yes Press births from the ether, sparking three sentences that grace the first pressing, one from each friend: “The firework scares / the herons from / their young. It even / disrupts your heart / from here. Imagine / being in its midst / in a dirigible.”

Yes Press, an artistic postcard letterpress company, is the brainchild of Zachary Carlsen, Brian Aldrich …

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“It’s the cruelest trick to play,” reaching across the table to pour another glass of the room-temperature water, “swapping like that.”

“I know.”

“And you are fine with this?”

He looks around the room again, seeing the sun-stained portrait he found in a local market years ago. The edges frayed from years of misuse. It reminds him of sitting in the military doctors’ office back home when he was a child. When his mother used to take him to the clinic for a check up, he would find himself among the local children huddled by the few sparse toys donated by the military men who were stationed near the village. He remembers how the picture faced south, much like this one, following the path of the sun as it arced across the sky with the mortar rounds from …

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There is a man who lives in Elliot Park. 622 16th St. A fine house. The man’s name is Melchior Scheldrup, of Norwegian descent. The year is 1894 and he works as the local pharmacist. One day Mr. Scheldrup gets out of bed, has breakfast and heads off to work. His pharmacy is only a couple of blocks away, on East 14th Street. He can stroll there easily, as most people do, to get to work. On one such easy stroll, Mr. Scheldrup arrives at the pharmacy, unlocks the door, flips the sign on the door to “open,” and checks to make sure the sign is telling the truth—that the pharmacy really is open. Readying himself and the store he waits for his first customers of the day. Some people arrive early to …

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Land ownership is such a scam. Somebody takes a big plot of earth, cordons it off, and builds a giant eyesore, most likely another business campus or other breeding ground for the living dead. They feed off of the nectar of dirt covered in grass covered in concrete covered in plastic, wood, carpet, rubber, and particle board for a few years and then leave it to rot. But they don’t really leave. They set up security guards, signs, and protocols for those who dare to enter, warning them of laws set up to protect the grotesque, empty shell that they’ve left behind. What’s the point? Shouldn’t it belong to the community whose land it’s occupying? Shouldn’t it belong to the artists, freaks, explorers, modern-day Nathaniel Wests? When the signs and symbols of antiquated industry have …

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Rumbling tracks from the approaching train, roaring exhaust from the passing bus, warning screams from the police siren – all call Southeast Minneapolis home.The bells don’t ring out from Turtle Community School any longer. Home for-sale signs seem to be the latest lawn ornament. Discarded red plastic party cups blow through the allies.The Como neighborhood acts as the sponge for University of Minnesota students who want to live close to campus but not exactly on it. People who rent out-number the home-owning residents almost 2-to-1, according to the 2000 U.S. Census.It is roughly bordered by highway 280, I-35 W, Hennepin Avenue and the U of M. The Eastern industrial zoned border and adjoining concrete thoroughfares align Como to the U of M, creating an isolated niche for a conveniently placed housing district.Over half of the …

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