The Wake

Looking for some new avenues to take in your reading selection? Check out these titles at your local library or book store.

Fiction:

• Scott Bradfield, The History of Luminous Motion
• Paul Auster, City of Glass
• Jose Saramago, The History of the Siege of Lisbon
• Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
• Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

Non-Fiction

• John R. Stilgoe, Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places
• Carlos Castaneda, The Teaching of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge
• Christopher Hitchens, God is not Great
• Lenny Bruce, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People
• Frank Rich, The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina Christoher Hitchens, God is not Great
• James Scully, Line Break: Poetry as Social Practice

Poetry

• Jules Boykoff, Once Upon a Neoliberal Rocket Badge
• Juliana Spahr, This Connection of Everyone with Lungs
• Éireann Lorsung, Music

…

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I’ve been smoked like a cig. I’ve been treated like a pig. I’ve been Newtoned like a fig, oh Lord. Oh, Lordy Lord, oh Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord.
Feels like I’m gonna snap like a twig.

I’ve been brought up way too high. And dragged down far too low. I guess that’s just the way things go. Oh, Lordy Lord, oh Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord.
But mere man shouldn’t try to disturb this river’s flow.

I’ve been dragged on through the mire. And tainted with false desire. I’ve been wrangled and tangled just like a wire. Oh, Lordy Lord, oh Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord.
But this war won’t stomp out these good soldiers’ fires.
No this rain it won’t Stamp out our American fire.

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 soak with the languid moats surrounding.
Is this kid kicking with him the middle
of the street or is it just his feet
with him?
It’s so easy to just give it a rinse 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 skin?Arbusto thrusted in ‘77’s, scented oils in-laden
anointed little ones—
scurry critters, scurry with the weather
or the withered,
just some ordinary demon, with a skillful part
and a wispy grin. Many kill
to profit
patient…

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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 the wars;
the subject class has
always
fought the battles”but what does that mean?
Obstructing
War
Where did it stall?
On the banks of the Somme?…

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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 Seattle on a stand-still
urging laborers to go out and protest
their grievances
for a better a wage, and a comfortable
way of life.I want to speak of the peace that came with their strike…

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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 June 4th. After a handshake from a few friends of mine and yours’, we’ll walk down Uni to the Capitol to meet yet more friends, and then we’ll head south to Red Wing for the …

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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 graduation gowns
for that final cap to the ad; this photograph,
today, as I remember it,
as I remember the helicopter skim above,
as …

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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 what I hope will be a comfortable position.
I consider the string cheese log, which I hope will provide the necessary energy to move to the bathroom. As it lies on my chest, I …

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Take my hand and
Walk under the archways
That lead to the shadiest part
Of the east-cityscape.
Where the dryness
Is not so bad as before
When you met up with me
Near your broken door.
Since you have slept
On the floor in the sand
That covers us all, I thought
I would help you stand.
So, now once more
I introduce you here
Where the sun does not
Sink in or sit so near.

As I brush past
This elegant hall
I ask that you take it in
And absorb it all.
There are a few
People waiting for you
To see what is coming
And to see if its true.
But, I digress, take
Your time, linger now
Before the time must come
When acrid sun bows.
Sit here …

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I was once subject to a dream
Recurring, yet always new
In a dark abandoned room, once bright
It appeared in a subjective view

Outside there stood a woman
Indistinguishable inside her hood
The face of a mirror, reflecting not me
But only the earth on which she stood

Sometimes at night, I chase her
Hoping her presence she’d construe
But, with my objects, I built each door
To lead into another room

She never returns to my dreams
For now she is the stars and moon
And every night, although it hurts
With my objects, I build another room

I was once subject to a dream
Recurring, yet always new
In a dark abandoned room, once bright
It appeared in a subjective view

Outside there stood a woman
Indistinguishable inside her hood
The face of a mirror, reflecting not me
But only the earth on which she stood

Sometimes at night, I chase her
Hoping her presence she’d construe
But, with my objects, I built each door
To lead into another room

She never returns to my dreams
For now she is the stars and moon
And every night, although it hurts
With my objects, I build another room

Once outside I light a smoke, “Marlboro No. 27”, and its tobacco is that which my brain might actually crave, wisp clouds pull depth from the blue and some water cascades down stairs leading to God—. No, only leading to Northrup but at least I’m looking and now I feel alive again, much less dead than this morning when upon waking I cursed the day. Next class is too close, too easy to find, too little time to waste walking and wishing I wasn’t going to class. Winter was a waste of time, for anyone looking for warmth, too few hours I spent sober, looking for warmth, and I find it here now in spring, far from it in fact, a tease of seasons and I’m already late for that class which was too close …

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We walk down streets
that bear mounds of ash

and wonder why we can’t see our feet,
or the black hole at the center of the town of ash.

It’s not as though we are strangers
to the mound of ash

spread in its ways, though at times I wonder why so
many distance themselves from these mounds of ash.

These days are nothing but the same feet walking between beams
coasting by houses and buildings standing stripped of their walls—to ash,

with no question or qualm,
and a precipitant [Bird] between the floorboards and the ivy.

At last on their way to sunny, cocktail decorated, ‘Some Spanish Island’ bliss, Ruby, Alice, and Veronica had only been on the plane for one hour (out of a twelve hour flight) when Alice got ‘airsick’ and threw up so much that the vomit-bag filled, and she had to ask for another one. Immediately following the ‘unsavory incident,’ the flight attendant had said with tight politeness, Alice had an irritatingly long stint in the bathroom. Ruby and Veronica were pissed, needless to say. Although Alice insisted that it was just the turbulence making her sick, Veronica knew it was the small rainbow of pills she’d taken before they’d got on the flight, and then again after the fight had taken off. Fear of flights my ass, she thought with disdain, purposefully ignoring her vodka and …

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