Who: Terry McAuliffe
What: Author discusses ‘What a Party.’
When: Wed, Feb. 7th, 7:00 pm. FREE
Where: University of Minnesota Bookstore (Coffman Memorial Union)

Who: Ray Suarez
What: The senior PBS correspondent discusses ‘The Holy Vote.’
When: Thu, Feb 8th, 7:00 pm. FREE; tickets required. Call 651.696.6203.
Where: Macalester College
1600 Grand Ave, St. Paul; 651.696.6000

Who: Nuruddin Farah
What: Author discusses his writing
When: Thu, Feb. 8th, 7:00 pm. FREE
Where: The Loft Literary Center
1011 Washington Ave S, Ste 200 (Open Book), Mpls; 612.215.2575

Who: Writers of Color Reading: Julie Bates; Jessica Lopez Lyman
What: Authors read from their work. Hosted by Sherry Quan Lee
When: Thu, Feb. 8th, 7:00 pm, FREE
Where: Patrick’s Cabaret
3010 Minnehaha Ave S, Mpls; 612.721.3595

Who: Skip Yowell
What: Mountaineer and JanSport co-founder discusses ‘The Hippie Guide to Climbing the Corporate Ladder & Other Mountains.’
When: Fri, Feb. 9th, 2:00 pm, FREE
Where: University of Minnesota Bookstore (Coffman Memorial Union)

Who: You
What: The Wake presents its first open-mic of 2007 with poetry, stories, music and ideas.
When: Fri, Feb. 9th, 7:00 pm, FREE
Where: The Starlight Café
407 14th Ave Se, Minneapolis, MN 55414; (612) 378-3129

Who: May Lee; Shoua Lee; The Un-Named Series: Hmong and Lao Writers
What: Readings
When: Tue, Feb. 13th, 5:30 pm, FREE
Where: The Loft Literary Center
1011 Washington Ave S, Ste 200 (Open Book), Mpls.; 612.215.2575

Standing at the bus stop, I scratch at my chin,
feel rough stubble growing.
my sweat smells like cigarettes.

A mantra runs through my head, A poem fueled
by alcohol and late nights sanitizing, purifying my thoughts:
:
I take it all back,
It bein’ The Fear
I’ll mail you the change.

I’m told of an old man,
He smells of antibacterial soap and war stories.
He is going back to Energy soon.
Decades of stress leave the old man’s face
visibly every day, every time he exhales
the wrinkles smooth out and ancient toxins hiss into the air,
harmless.
I take it all back,
It bein’ The Fear
I’ll mail you the change.

He couldn’t teach me how to be a Mexican,
The Spanish sticky sugar in my mouth.
It tasted sweet, but never would roll off,
Just stuck there, caramelized, a latent thing
That I would never really speak, just hear
From my father’s fluent foreign tongue.

I looked a bit like him, but my own tongue
Was my mother’s, Minnesota’s. Mexicans
Made beautiful “R’s,” like the sound you hear
From a contented cat, but my own mouth
Produced the sound like lawnmowers, snow blowers, things
That I grew up with and could not shut off.

It would seem only natural to be put off,
Frustrated, shaming myself for my tongue,
An un-exotic, bland and stubborn thing,
Refusing to assume a Mexican
Stance—would form domestic O’s with my mouth,
Like “boat” like “snow,” like endless roads I’d hear,

Not the beautiful staccato there to hear
During telephone conversations to far off
Places, to people who helped create the tongue
That could barely say “I love you,” the mouth
That stayed shut, eyes that burned. When Mexican
Abuelitos said “Te Quiero” I never said a thing.

“Lo siento” was one of the only things
I could actually say, and when I’d.hear
It, I’d want to cry for myself, for Mexican
Aunts with gorgeous tans, on or off
The beach, and with an obedient tongue,
That didn’t have to say “I’m Sorry.” A mouth

With more than four words in it. A mouth
I envied wholly. I envied their everything.
My mother said I didn’t need a tongue
For such things. I was not born there, but here,
An American. I didn’t have to go off
And learn to be a Mexican.

Mouth closed, I hear frowns in my father’s words.
It’s hard to get a thing like that off your American chest
Without a Mexican tongue.

My eyes swell and ferment—
This poetry of desensitization
postured on this glass and plastic
synthetic mask I asked it to stop but it kept blasting and
what is it to break the flow—

Give me some good old fashioned barn burning
best be sure that you mask this with petrol
and ask it to burn through to the exteriors
bind with the lines masquerading as cobwebs curtaining the street sides.

I’ll give it a hello and call it a halo glow
with a drip, drip skid of toxic ecstasy.
I want to expose Grey’s
Anatomy and drag it across the floor.

Who: Lynne Eldridge
What: Author discusses ‘Avoiding Cancer One Day at a Time.’
When: Thursday, January 25th, 2 pm.
Where: U of M Bookstore (Coffman), FREE

Who: Geraldine Heng
What: The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages
When: Thursday, January 25th, 4 pm.
Where:

Who: Northography Reading
What: Seven writers read from recent works.
When: Friday, January 26th, 7:30 pm.
Where: Magers & Quinn Booksellers (3038 Hennepin Ave S), FREE

Who: Carol Connolly; Bart Sutter
What: The St. Paul and Duluth poet laureates read from their work.
When: Saturday, January 27th, 7 pm.
Where: Magers & Quinn Booksellers (3038 Hennepin Ave S), FREE

Who: PRISM: John Landretti; Sarah Moeding
What: Poetry!
When: Sunday, January 28th, 1 pm.
Where: Coffee Gallery (1011 Washington Ave S), FREE

Who: Kathryn Sikkink
What: Globalizing Justice: Do Human Rights Trials Really Work?
When: Monday, January 29th, 7:30 pm.
Where: U of M Nolte Hall, FREE

Who: Tom Vraalsen
What: The Norwegian Diplomat discusses: Sudan at the Crossroads: Two Years After Signing the Comprehensive Peace Agreement
When: Tuesday, January 30th, 11:30 am.
Where: Cowles Auditorium (U of M Humphrey Center)

I wanted some good old-fashioned schizophrenia the other day—
some conflicting mind interest to get the ‘ole ticker clicking.

At first I was hesitant, not wanting to pursue conflicting questions arisen
but instead pursue some truth and forget this blind vision.

Turns out the mind doesn’t work that way, being mistaken for something
else, rather than that pigeon nibbling on its feathers outside the window

by the kitchen eating Lord knows what between its feathers—
exploring its beak—it’s a shame this fella can’t speak.

I’ve got this box of radiation that likes to hang out
sending ripples into my eardrum trying to make meaning.

My lips don’t make this same frequency. Is it really happening?
I don’t even know what Wolf Blitzer sounds like in real time.

In my mind he happens to carry a clipboard and a beard on his face
facing this contraption camera capturing captivating careers

of tacit hatespeak. I want to understand Islamo-Fascism and who their leader is
and the basis of this philosophy any why it’s not made so concrete

to me and you and everybody between the news and the truth
and this schizophrenic dive bar.

We are the Fashionable Fascismo,
We type meaningless odes on Machina of Masochismo

The Macho Gestapo ate my spicy gazpacho,
So I made friends with a Rasta chick eating anti-pasto.

Fourteen degrees of winter,
the trees frozen in their stillness,
leaves still scattered upon the ground.
An atypical coldness,
one that smells like winter all the same.
This is a desert of homes, streets, shops and churches.
Its only color is the bright knit scarves
that adorn passers through.
Each body a small furnace
bundled to keep the warm in
exhaling exhaust in small clouds
that skim the shoulders and trail behind the body.
The sun erupts through an opening
shines down to defrost numb foreheads.
Your maroon mitten wipes your running nose,
as you look through the pieced trees and see her,
one of those people you used to know.
Like all this trailing breath,
the scarves, hats, mittens that have been around for years,
people who knew us before know things we never told them.
Sometimes it is best instead

Dive from the top
just don’t stop as it glints
with a tint of green hills
that now gray fading hints

of the young who cry out
although dumb still can shout
peeling chives that have dried
yes, and died from the drought

How she climbs, no she leaps
lifting limbs past the cliff
where her feet seem to drift
in the midst of the deep

So the two do not eat
of the earth, of the air
No, they dare do not feed
for a wolf will not share

Yet they stare and they stare
through the dark – through the night
and they wait and they stare
and they wait, where’s the light?
And they stare and they wait
and they wait and they stare
and they grasp and they pull
at their hair, where’s the air?
And they shout and they scream
and they scream it’s a dream!
while they lean on the walls
in their damp prison hall

`til one falls from the heat
from the steam
it’s a dream…

And they sit and they breath
in the air
it’s not fair…

But the room remains dark

so they wait and they stare

It was do or die for us. The air was cold and naughty. We felt like that feeling you get when you walk outside on winter days—cold and depressed. I don’t know why but there was this thing that was standing solid on the side of the passage—idle, like the mind of a dumb person. It was frozen, probably from the cold—because winters here are known for not being liked by many people. As luck would have it, a car drove towards us at a snails pace and finally picked us up. The man had a darkness to him, like a sandwich left out overnight. I didn’t know how to show my friend how the cow at the cabbage so I remained still and silent hoping my friend would see the figures’ cud for himself. He turned around to the back seat and said “Hello” to me. He then looked to my cohort and gave a grin from ear to ear. His face twitching like the beat of a drum. “I don’t mean to make a mountain out of a molehill, but did you two rabble-rousers introduce that edifice to my land?” Mike looks over to me concerned. I know what he is thinking. His worried face said to me, let’s make like a tree Jim. Let’s leave. “We didn’t leave that on your property. Our car hit the bucket down the road a ways. Could you give us a ride to the nearest petroleum depot? We are tired and cold from walking.” The man, looking at us, not paying attention to the road, stopped and asked us to get out. “You darn kids and your punk rock music. Get the Sam Hill out of my car.”

Our hell became frozen over. Craving the warmth, our screams fail to break the clouds. And so we stood still, like a person meditating, hoping we donn’t kick the bucket in the bleak cold.