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 rest in the sleep of the ages 46
soldiers of the grand army of the Republic]
tangled within the roots of the octopus trees
just feet from the wading pool in
Beltrami
[Maple Hill
Cemetery]

Park?

The children
make their way to the baseball diamond
dusted in red. How many hearts lie over here?
beneath the sun-quenched concrete
inches from the busy blacktop side streets.
If I could dig my toes into the top soil
and sink down into the warm loam
would I find smooth white shutters
with faces behind coffin text and
window panes I cannot open?
How long will they remain
in these caskets without markers?

I hope I’m not in the way

Sink! Sink!
Your sacred skin is hidden now
And banished to below.
Let the land layer away
with the tombs of history.

And above these steppes brings you nowhere.
Climb with me.
The view from here
is perfect.

No Exit
No Exit
No Exit
Do not try to cross here
The entrance ramp
No Exit.