Jake's Flea Market

it never comes out the way it went in


  • sell that money for which you

    sell that money for which youpaid the sixth part of brandenburg that you succeeded to

  • before her father thinks to pen a letter

    In medieval and early modern Europe it was a norm for a bride’s family to offer a dowry for a prospective Groom— or for the church— to take on the care and keep of a daughter. The dowry could comprise as little as a pot from a poor family, to estates from a wealth family.…

  • now that it’s may

    In Europe of the fifteen hundreds, everything was usually postponed ‘til spring. Warmer weather dried the roads and the soil; and plows, carts, and armies didn’t get bogged down in mud. now that it’s mayand the frozen roads have thawedand the thawed roads have dried and ruttednora’s father’s forsaken wittenbergleft his stores and his house…

  • unite the leisure divided

    Though primogeniture, the passing of an estate to the eldest son, was the norm in sixteenth century Europe, it wasn’t unusual for estates of the Holy Roman Empire to be divided between sons. Beyond this observation, these lines are fiction— the biography of a fictional Margrave: Who in life, got it all together; and in…

  • abandon your studies boycott a future

    Europe was dominated by Christianity— first Catholic, then the Protestant Reformation. Members of the clergy could come to wield extensive power and influence in their regions, beginning with the officiating at the rites of passage…. abandon your studies boycott a futurea country with trails and lanesroads through fields and forestsvillages of the poor and their…

  • daydream

    daydreamthe words you cannot read abandon themstare at a space on the wall where nothing’s writtenin the gallery of your head on a wall hangsa perfect rendering of a pretty wench’s facean accurate remembranceof what her paps and her hips do to a gowndo arithmetic think fingers calculatethe number of months of weeks of daysbefore…

  • rather than have you

    It was an anti-romantic era in Europe, especially among the nobility and the wealthy: Most often, marriages were arranged to serve political and economic agendas. And people in vestments usually had a second— a third— even a fourth religion. And the relationships between teachers and students, and masters and apprentices in both the trades and…

  • say i’m

    say i’m given leave from my evenings and the nights of my weekfrom the books i read and the paper on which i writefrom my mornings and my weekday afternoonsthe lectures and the lectern at which i standleave to ride in a merchant’s carton the road out of my entire life

  • nora

    University of Wittenberg: Late 16th/ Early 17th century. nora say she’s jerusalem say she’s mecca i tell you she’s another wench stays in a castle room near antwerp

  • five oclock’s the first to leave

    five oclock’s the first to leaveit also goes out through the staffonly doorits mouth’s a horn it leaves behindits voice is the sound of the hornits word is its voice that goes out in the rainthat goes through the rainwithout an umbrella without getting wetit wraps itself around the parking lotit gets into parked cars…