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NONFICTION

Many ecologists believe in the value to "leave no trace" on the environment. But what does that say about us if we subscribe to that? Are humans part of nature, or separate from it?
Given the economic climate, and given a choice, why would someone stay in Michigan? Part memoir, part travel essay, part book-review, this article looks widely and finds opportunity and creativity in times of trouble.

POETRY

Patty Seyburn

No felons, lepers, witnesses under
federal or state protection, celebs
fleeing exes, stalkers, the law, please know
I have little affection for blunders
of nature and judgment ...

By Karl Elder

Take your own future.
Say luck has not struck. ...

By Mary Ann Samyn

Little August, August ago:
I could have saved myself a lot of heartache.
But that’s not how I define the feminine. ...

THE WAKE BLOG

Death’s Door: The surface and depths are antinomes, mutual contradictions: placid vs. ragged; sun drenched and cadent vs. benumbed and opaque; malleable vs. unyielding. But at times, mixed by wind, they join and conspire with the jagged teeth of nearby granite cliffs to shred the intrepid or foolhardy.

Death’s Door: Unceremonious grave for a surfeit of boats and bodies, humans and their conveyances.

Death’s Door: A constriction connecting Lake Michigan and Green Bay; a Venturi nozzle slicing through the Door archipelago of Plum, Washington, Detroit, and Rock, islands, accelerating hidden tumbling currents.

Death’s Door: Today’s destination.

FICTION

By Randall Silvis
We lived in the country in a small yellow house, with large yards in the front and back, woods on all sides, our closest neighbors a half mile away and as eager to be left alone as we were. The exterior of the house was in need of painting and there was only one chair in the living room but we seldom had visitors then and one chair was all we needed when we sat holding one another in the evening while listening to music. We had a big, frisky and sometimes obtrusively affectionate Irish Setter named Berrigan, who on hot summer afternoons when we sunbathed behind the house never failed to warn of the approach of a meter reader or salesman, and who with his resonant growl would keep the intruder at bay until we could pull on our clothes and prepare ourselves for the world again.
By Jim Daniels
I remember only one vacation in my sixteen years on Planet Detroit, though my parents had photographic evidence of me as a baby on the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes looking marooned, disconsolate, in the middle of all that sand. It could’ve been the surface of the moon, a photo doctored like my father claimed they did at NASA.

ABOUT WAKE

Wake is a new journal focused on work that evokes the broad culture of the Great Lakes. We are looking for a variety of articles on Great Lakes subjects, and we are open for submissions now. Please read our mission statement and submission guidelines for details, and check back often as we continue to add content.

Wake is a publication of Grand Valley State University.

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