The Wake

Before I forget how it felt let me tell you:
the lightning rod entered the end of my nostril
and moved up my sinus like vine branches teething.
It stayed in my brain for a season, destroying
every room like a road-kill hotel flashing vacancy.
Then it fell under my thoughts like a wall cloud
and some kind of siren-throats howled in unison,
WOAAAO WOAA they knew it was building,
WOAAAO WOAA they howled in unison.
Under my earlobes a worm started growing;
it gnawed at my cortex like angel hairs burning.
An ash settled onto my skull-base and tempered;
it blistered a nerve that kept twitching my fingers.
At once a huge mirror ball shattered its pieces
and glitter fell down through my head like invention.
Then slowly, …

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She only wanted,
independence.
The kind that walks alone in the alley
and has no shadow to follow.
Or the mountain that’s untouched
by human hands, thirty-five hundred feet away
prevailing, solidly.
The living right to fly
liberating, soothing and nonrestrictive.
She had dreams too
and wouldn’t come down
from cloud nine until she
was ready. I don’t really
believe that she wanted
to marry that man, she did
though, suppose she felt it was
“The right thing to do.”
Knowing what awaited her arrival,
a warm household full of chores,
beautiful mule, wifely duties and
the Baby Machine in full effect.
Where a woman only needs to produce
strong healthy children.
That’s a woman’s worth!
I think she would …

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For as long as I can remember, most of my peers have been telling me that comic books are entirely uninteresting. This is usually after they notice that I’ve got three full boxes of comics plus a bookshelf dedicated to trade paperbacks and graphic novels. In fact, in high school I apparently had a reputation for carrying a briefcase full of nothing but comics (this is only half true; I’ll leave it to the reader to guess which half).What disappoints me about this negative view of comics is that they can be so much more interesting and descriptive than many standard written novels. Comics can reflect the mindset of the status quo, touch on recent events, name celebrities or even create revisions of history in order to broaden a reader’s perceptive horizon. So where do …

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This is the first hazed morning of the twentieth year of my time.
My bloomed perennial hands unfolding to button flies in the dark of morning.
a blanket cracked open and shivered as I leave to
gas the pedal over four lane interstate,
back to the city in which I sleep.The expectant wisdom of this day
is groggy mute
still from the chloroform of adolescence,
and I have left my chest’s thumping furnace
still nineteen laying with you in rest.I do not need this—
aged calm.
Hoping still to believe
that the earth is flat.I have found no voice of reason
in the predawn of this new and sputtering age.

In a pair of your sister’s
pink socks
you had a dance party— through the phone
I could hear the
shuffle of your feet on the carpet,
I could see your free
hand wave above your head, your
eyes squeezed
shut, smiling, and I could hear in
the back the beat
of the News, though you claim not to
know the Power of Love—
but I Know you Know it, you
pink footed dancer, you
brown-haired wonder-girl, you
singer of secrets!

Are you real? The
sycophant news junkie writhes
on the couch wondering sees
the world in your eyes the suffering
hunger war victory speeches passion
so passionlessly read dispassionate face
clear eyes, furious frenzied desperate to
prove your body exists
from the waist down desire erection
something under your pants no smooth
Ken Doll Groin covered by modular
plastic faux wood panel
naked
from the screen down are you real?

I walked out of an exit poll
and into an opinion made ready and pinned
onto my sleeve green epaulettes tarnished
dull we get more
information in one day than
Einstein’s library our relative
stupidity a quantum chasm dog
politicians speak and no one
asks where the bones are
buried.

Known for her essays, Cheryl Strayed, a fellow Minnesotan, has published three works over the past six years. She published two essays, “Heroin/e” and “The Love of my Life” in The Best American Essays 2000 and The Best American Essays 2003 respectively. Strayed also published her first novel, Torch, last month. Strayed’s essay, “Heroin/e,” takes on the tragic reality of her mother’s death, as well as her own addiction to heroin. This is her first essay and was written with such care that each word hangs in the back of my head as I read it.Maybe it’s the music (I’m listening to The Black Heart Procession’s song “I Guess I’ll Forget You”), maybe it’s the prophetic visions of what it would be like if it were my own mother in this situation; whatever it is, …

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It would seem poetry has fallen off the face of pop culture. Modern music, film and television have no time for line breaks and meter. These forms of media have even taken poetry’s place when it comes to entertainment. But maybe we aren’t looking hard enough and poetry still finds its way into modern culture’s consciousness. Recently, I came across the movie Slam, which stars poet and musician Saul Williams. The movie won Dramatic Feature Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the Golden Camera at the Cannes Film Festival in 1998. After watching the movie, I realized poetry still has a presence in today’s entertainment. Slam illustrates the redemptive qualities of poetry and, more specifically, spoken word. Through the eyes of Williams’ character, Ray Joshua, the power of words becomes clear. After …

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We march through snow
In blinding strides.
The wind is fierce
And sun is gold.
Why must cold
Bite so
Silent
In my flesh
To rivers
Violent.

My world was carpet and tiles.
I could never see the floorboards
beneath: ascetics, prostrate under feet.
I asked my Mother questions and I
could tell it was Sunday by the way the sun
soared through the windows and landed
on the backs of the unreasonable
couches. Terry cloth capes,
plastic swords, and I was David.
The ceiling, the floor above it, the roof,
were held up by angles more than walls.
The Smiling Catholic, towering, always
coming home, never leaving.I saw the next one made.
I saw the cement, the timber,
the glass that went into it.
The walls, the stairs, the nails.
I cut its umbilical chord,
but, being young and foolish,
I cut it improperly.
A professional has to finish the job.
But I hung on to my little bit of it….

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So you hear it –
Do it until you hear it!He continued to band his head against
the trunk of a tree until he heard it, until
he heard nothing. For her he clenched the tree’s base, awaiting the eyelet’s
satisfaction, no cries came. Then he hovered until the spaceunderneath his fingernails bled.
She couldn’t yell loud enough;
he couldn’t impulse hard enough.

Once in the morning
When we pushed, pulled, and wiped
Her spotted yellow skin.Again in the afternoon
As we hoisted her fetal body
From chair to bed.And once more in the evening
While we stripped her,
Snapped on her gown, and bid her a goodnight.She didn’t work anymore.
I heard once that she had been a teacher
Years ago.She never played although I assumed
The faded black and white photos
Of a vibrant young girl were her.I hadn’t heard her talk much
Except, of course, to plead with God
Or to curse me as I wiped the feces from her body.I asked her once about her family;
Having never seen anyone visit, I was curious.
She said, “This is a nice room; is it for rent?”Occasionally her heart would stop
And I would think …

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Let me make one thing clear about Kung Fu High School: It’s not one of those traditional coming-of-age stories about, say, an asthmatic kid who gets picked on at school and starts practicing martial arts to prove that he’s just as good as the next kid. No, that would be Sidekicks starring Chuck Norris. Kung Fu High School, by Ryan Gattis, is structured in much the same way as most martial arts movies are with 45 minutes of exposition in the first half, 45 minutes of climactic high-action fight scenes in the second half.Imagine, if you will, a high school overrun with gangs, and the proverbial gang leader runs a drug trafficking ring out of the school cafeteria and has the school’s principal on his payroll. Not every gang holds loyalty to this …

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(Somewhere in the middle of it all)On the wind docks we sat
alone – so solitary for a we.
You shivered and said you
were uncomfortable, but
I wanted to feel the wind caress
a little longer.I did not know that the wind
was the villain
these past couple years.
It took me until now to realize
just how far it carried
me.I belong to the parachute people –
they call me to duty.
I wage war on the wind docks
(The wind always seems to take me,
however.)Now I fly above the willow forests
seeking news on where to find
where I will be was –
and their stems whisper
to me so softly, each leaf shimmering in the breeze,
saying, This, this is where you are home. Among the departed …

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