[extraction]
Emily Barton Altman
Canals
Other summers, further summers. Canals dug to promote trade. We trudge through the rain along the Hudson to locate the long-ago beginning of the Erie Canal, now filled in and covered with warehouses and sidewalks. It is possible this canal brought the Sea Lamprey to the Lakes, first discovered there in 1835. To see a canal is to see one kind of potential. Some summers, other summers, every summer: the Lake blues, the water clear.
Recreation
At some point, alewives enter. They most likely are introduced through the canal. They overpopulate, destabilize, remove the basis. The trout die. The alewives die. The choice is to introduce salmon, bred in captivity. To turn the lake into a destination for fishing.
Ballast
Other summers, further summers: ballast from the ocean dumped into a lake. Easy to offset weight, easy to dispose of. Brackish. No one thinks of the zebra, quagga, mussel, or the destabilization. Still, no one wants to admit. “A vital waterway,” the St. Lawrence Seaway, turning the Midwest into a port. Other summers: ships no longer fit their locks.
Carp
Some summers it seems easy to ignore, other summers you construct an electric fence. If DNA is found, it’s difficult to say. Dead fish fill rivers and lakes. Some summers, to know is to ignore. Other summers, it is to pretend.
Fish
The fish enter. How to make a sea of this? The Lakes comprise 20 percent of accessible freshwater in the world. We introduce and introduce and introduce. The fish die. Lake levels lower, then rise. How to make a sea of this?
Emily Barton Altman is the author of two chapbooks, Bathymetry (Present Tense Pamphlets, 2016), and Alice Hangs Her Map (dancing girl press, 2019). Recent poems are forthcoming or appear in Second Factory, Bone Bouquet, Tagvverk, and elsewhere. She is a recipient of a Poets & Writers Amy Award and received her MFA from New York University. She is currently a PhD Candidate in English and Creative Writing at the University of Denver.