#debra marquart

Debra Marquart, My father's wallet

they have opened you up and said, come in take everything

what will become of your sacred places

what will become of the prairie dog

the wolf, the wild horses, the eagle

the meadowlark, the fox, the elk

the pronghorn sheep, the rare mountain lion

the roads, the air, the topsoil

your people, your people

what will become of the water

north dakota who will ever be able to live with you

once this is all over i’m speaking to you now

as one wildcat girl to another be careful north dakota

For you can travel with a screaming red rolling bag

and float unnoticed on conveyors, through terminals

or you can lug half a moose rack from Maine

to Minnesota, carry it like a broken wing through airports

as my friend Gro did, and draw only the curious touches

of children waiting at gates. But dare to travel with a guitar

and invite confessions from strangers in pinstripe suits

of garage band summers, invite winks, gotcha smiles,

and devil's horns rock on gestures. Invite finger points

and winks, the long tongue licks, and the rubberneck glance

to check if you are someone famous. To dare to travel

with a guitar is to mark yourself charismatic megafauna

of the airport terminal. Old friend, what else could I do

but carry you? I have stored you in closets, propped you

in corners, hunched over you late-nights, staring perplexed

at the mysteries of your neck. Body of my body, string

of my strings, see how the world began to hum and sing

that day at thirteen when I opened the big birthday box.

north dakota     i’m worried about you the companies you keep   all these new friends     north dakota            beyond the boom, beyond the precious resources                        do you really think they care what becomes of you

north dakota     you used to be the shy one enchanted secret land loved by only a few     north dakota

when i traveled away and told people i belonged to you     north dakota           your name rolled awkwardly from their tongues                       a mouth full of rocks, the name of a foreign country

north dakota     you were the blushing wallflower the natural beauty, nearly invisible, always on the periphery north dakota     the least visited state in the union    

now everyone knows your name     north dakota the blogs and all the papers are talking about you     even 60 minutes

i’m collecting your clippings     north dakota the pictures of you from space            the flares of natural gas in your northern corner                       like an exploding supernova                                  a massive city where no city exists                                               a giant red blight upon the land

and those puncture wounds     north dakota     take care of yourself the injection sites     I’ve seen them on the maps four thousand active wells    one every two miles

all your indicators are up     north dakota            eighteen billion barrels, some estimates say

more oil than we have water to extract            more oil than we have atmosphere to burn

north dakota     you could run the table right now;           you could write your own ticket   so, how can i tell you this?    north dakota, your politicians    are co-opted (or cowards or bought-out or honest and thwarted)        they’re lowering the tax rate for oil companies        they’re greasing the wheels that need no greasing        they’re practically giving the water away

north dakota     dear sleeping beauty    please, wake up they have opened you up and said, come in     take everything            what will become of your sacred places        what will become of the prairie dog        the wolf, the wild horses, the eagle        the meadowlark, the fox, the elk        the pronghorn sheep, the rare mountain lion        the roads, the air, the topsoil        your people, your people        what will become of the water

Traveling with Guitar Debra Marquart

For you can travel with a screaming red rolling bag and float unnoticed on conveyors, through terminals

or you can lug half a moose rack from Maine to Minnesota, carry it like a broken wing through airports

as my friend Gro did, and draw only the curious touches of children waiting at gates. But dare to travel with a guitar

and invite confessions from strangers in pinstripe suits of garage band summers, invite winks, gotcha smiles,

and devil's horns rock on gestures. Invite finger points and winks, the long tongue licks, and the rubberneck glance

to check if you are someone famous. To dare to travel with a guitar is to mark yourself charismatic megafauna

of the airport terminal. Old friend, what else could I do but carry you? I have stored you in closets, propped you

in corners, hunched over you late-nights, staring perplexed at the mysteries of your neck. Body of my body, string

of my strings, see how the world began to hum and sing that day at thirteen when I opened the big birthday box.

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More poems about music and travel.

On this day in:

A telephone rings like an emergency six times each minute in a room down the hall. I think of the one to whom bad news is coming. At the market, she touches fruit. Driving home, she strums her fingers on the steering wheel. She hums with the radio and thinks of her lover, the one she's left behind, or the one she will see again, remembers the soft heat of his breath, the urgency of his belly against hers. This is the way life insists on itself, his scent still on her as she reaches for the phone. Happy to catch it in mid-ring, she comes through the door, leaves her keys dangling in the lock. She leans in, unclips an earring, to hear the voice on the other end saying, I've got some bad news, feeling in that long moment before the words come, the difference between the way it was and the way it will be, that moment before the groceries fall to the floor.