Jacob Rakovan's work has appeared in Spindle, Other Magazine, My Favorite Bullet, The Deep Cleveland Junkmail Oracle among others, and has two poems forthcoming in The Dead Mule School Of Southern Literature. His Poem "A letter to city of Austin utilities Att: Customer Rep Susan." won Outstanding Screenplay in Texas' 24PS film festival as "My Electric Bill" Jacob is a father of four and a resident of Rochester, New York. He maintains the site "the writing machine" at jacob-rakovan.blogspot.com

The Northern Country

the robins are starving in the thin snow
their blood splashed chests, a false fire
in the glass branches of trees

there is a river, that is falling,
over stone and ice,
that has been falling
since the stones ground flour
that now decorate unused parks
and an empty museum, with a gift shop

each day, i sit in half-burned down factory
where 36 men burned to death
beetled on the edge of the cliff

from the empty office
across the hall
the water is steady as time,
as the water that carried a trained bear
over the falls in a barrel,
that killed Sam Patch the daredevil, in 1829

the engines that ran the streetcars
rust in a disused bar's basement
and the river, indifferent
to living and dead

drops through the broken wheelhouse
riming the bones of abandoned scaffolding with ice
this is a brutal country,
still half wild
beneath suburban streets.

the old hotels and whorehouses
keep their secrets
masquerading as chain resteraunts,
as boarded storefronts

at night, with my hound howling
at the swollen udders of the moon
trying to hang himself with his leash
we chase deer across the frozen lawns

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My father's creed

"this toothed-wheel world unwinding
Hobbled gear in the engine of heaven.
See here,the secret library
beneath the pyramid
the spark plug embedded in stone
the clay jars filled with electricity and stale wine

here is the prophet of virginia beach
here is the fifth world
here is a jar filled with ashes
here is a stone calender stopwatch for humanity

silently ticking

here is a layer of black ash with bones beneath it
here is grease, and engines and steel
here is the map of the world-that-was,
the islands of the antarctic,the lost kingdoms

here is the map of the world-that-will-be
the tilted bowl of the lakes
spilling down, new york and los angeles
dreaming below the swollen ocean
here are saucers, buzz-sawing through the sky
the water teeming with lake monsters,
cryptozoological horrors and wonders
yeti and the hollow earth
in mass, say only this:

“lord I am not worthy to receive you
but only say the word and I shall be healed”

know this:the world will end,
the lakes will pour across
the center of america,
the cities are doomed
to devolve to beast-men,
to burn without ceasing
while planes drop from the sky like stunned birds

know this: I live here,
with my library of secrets,
my heart filled with monsters
on the lip of the lake,
the edge of the city
waiting on the word
waiting for an end