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Montana Poet Laureate
Sheryl Noethe's Poetry
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The Cougar Pizza
A guy offered me a slice of cougar.
He was proud of his illegal meat,
held it out to me in white wrapping paper
while I saw it on a branch
tail twitching, pink sun bleeding
into a magenta heaven.
A slice of coiled muscle
pale and tender dusk on a frozen lake
as the last glance of the sun lights up
in passing a red-blue forest on the far slope,
the black shadows of elk.
Green beneath the white.
Blue beneath the gray.
The meat flares briefly in
lustrous concentric striations
then leaps onto the back
of a running figure
and what you now see that man
slicing onto a pizza
is only the shimmering image
that ran away with itself.
Rural Poetry Workshop
I could hear them screaming from the spelling bee
and it made me uneasy, suggesting a tension that pushed
at the surface, pouching into a weakening wall, a dike ready to give.
The drummer told me he couldn't sleep thinking about this day,
worried that he wouldn't be interesting enough, that he'd bore the kids,
that he might get a bad name, never be asked back, that sort of thing.
Look, I said, you're an artist. If there's a wild card anywhere it's the kids.
They're worked up and it's hot and they've eaten lots of candy.
The parents will leave to go chat in the hall, and the teachers decide it's not their job...
I could see I was making things worse so I shut up.
The hundred and forty arrived, looking at us like they already suspected
we would try our best to dupe them.
I took half the group to a classroom for the poetry workshop where they revealed
not a pencil or sheet of paper among them, not a care in the world.
They sat down and eyed me warily.
I walked among them, describing how to assemble a chant poem, one line per student.
Describe yourself as a part of nature, as a color, a movement, a sound.
The first boys refused, just shook their heads and settled farther into their hats.
They had no idea my desperation was so much greater than their desire not to speak.
I grinned hard, sweating, heart-beat rustling in my ears, and moved in closer.
Inches from each face I asked where they found their favorite color, what machinery
they could master, what animal they spied upon. I figured it could go two ways.
Either I could engage them with the force of my will and sheer rocklike wall of faith
or it could all break down, we would reveal that there was no connecting luminous
umbilicus between us, that language holds no contract, that one generation
simply waits for the last to die, that entropy rules a formless sea.
We reassembled for a poets' chorus accompanied by the drummer's rhythm, bells & chimes.
I divided them into two groups and walked child to child with the microphone.
One boy described himself as a deer drunk on beer. Another was a blistering badger
crawling through the tunnel gap. The flight of owls and hawks. The red of a tractor.
The moon on the wood beneath your bare feet on a night when you cannot sleep.
We finished in record time. The teachers lined up their students to climb back on the buses
and get home to chores, thankfully free of poets begging for images.
The drummer and I collapsed on the stage floor and I said, chaos wanted to touch us.
It reached for us from behind the air. I could smell it. That's why you couldn't sleep.
You had a premonition that chaos knew your name and in the group of children
it would lay its hand upon you.
I helped him load his drums into the car. He said I made a good roadie.
It was mid-afternoon and we were free. The road stretched ahead like an uncurling ribbon.
We sped back to our lives. Chaos followed like a faithful dog.
Her white hair
Spring in three white crocus.
Arlene dies
Again.
A window appears on a wall
in my bedroom
Someone warns me,
There's a dead woman in there, sleeping.
I crawl through,
kneel at the bed,
my heat face to face
against her cool,
and I beg her
not to come again,
dying every night
in my sleep of perpetual grief.
Morning, the window open,
Her breath on my cheek whispers
It's good, she says, everyone's here.
Was it Big Joe who died in the field? Was it Daddy?
Who died?
Like I was there.
Like she's talking from a dream.
From my sad childhood bed
I watched her window,
The light at her table,
The whirl of snow-white hair,
Shining lighthouse of my dark swim.
Old Poet by the Road
For Ed Lahey
The old poet stands beside the dusty road and I pull over.
We are going for a cool drink on this last summer day.
We are the type to tape poems to our walls.
A woman once said to him,
"It takes two to make a world."
He is moving from the cockroach-infested apartments
Into the senior citizen high rise where
The front doors are all locked, and in the elevator
A shakily hand-lettered sign announces:
two chairs for sale see Evelyn.
He says, "It's pretty sterile here".
Not for long. His pockets of chaos, his black flame;
Nothing here will ever be the same:
The introduction of the heroic to the mundane.
Already the other tenants are scanning the sky.
In the cafeteria they pull empty chairs close up, these seats all saved.
Cigarettes tucked in his jacket, master works
Of civilization crumpled on handfuls of paper.
Having experienced the ineffable yearnings of our species
In the face of nature's indifference, he says
"I am a Buddhist but I need passion.
Come on, little one, drive me home."
A Shimmering Absence
Thin as paper, pale, tired, and nervous.
We sat within the thicket of trees and I tried to comfort God.
Everything you have made is so pretty.
Wind blew and God shivered,
Trembled like silk. God was missing teeth.
We seem intent upon killing each other.
I don't know if you can change that, or if you want to.
God pondered this thought, so translucent I could see the forests.
When I study your creation I am filled with love for all that lives.
God seemed cheered. The clouds sang in ancient voices.
The Polar Caps reflected molecules from the sun and cities,
Back against the sky, undulating curtains draped the horizon.
God said, Thank you, baby.
I hope it doesn't rain, because I have nowhere dry to sleep.
The police roust me from my camp by the river, security guards
kick me awake from the buildings.
I called all the churches. "Try the Salvation Army,"
They said, and the Salvation Army said, "Try the shelters"
and the shelter says, "He has a dog? No dogs allowed."
I offered dry socks and my pink wool blanket.
The guy at the hotel said, "No bums. No service animals."
I asked God, "How long have you been on the road?"
God replied, Since my mother died and her husband kicked me out.
I drove him and the dog to the edge of town,
gave him a bottle of water. The two of them walked away
From the back, entirely lovable. Possible. Hopeless and fragile.
They were two characters from a children's story, side by side.
It was like the body of God turned inside
out and with a shimmering, God disappeared.
"Call me!" I cried, and God said, I'm all out of quarters.
9 hours
Sitting in the dark at the kitchen table
Writing blindly, spurred by the antagonism of insomnia;
Seduced again by the ruby Tuesday moon.
All politics began between two people.
Sleeping beside me this human body,
This soft machine of flesh and dream
makes a sound
at the end of each breath,
shimmering tinsel
ribbons between us,
far unseen wind chime
whose only master is the breeze.
His lungs a deep bellows, his leg across mine:
Pages in an open book, spread carelessly.
The sound of his voice in his sleep,
Rumbling of the constant heart.
My accompanist, co-defendant, accomplice.
Pressed up against my back I feel his stout heart
House of bone with significant regard.
Quickening in one's parts, brief summer lightning
Ticking sleepily yet alert to possibility.
Post-industrial man continues with his efforts underground.
I struggle with a woman over my purse in a dream.
Reservation School
The poet asks the children to hold their breath and keep still.
Eyes wide, hands covering mouths, they look around at each other.
Not wanting to break the moment until they gasp and laugh.
Now, he says, write about the silence.
Silence is a rock not moving in a lake
Says the brown haired 4th grader in a whisper.
I nod, and a few children like that, they begin
Nodding their heads at beautiful thoughts.
A little girl in braids with a waist as narrow as a wasp
Reads from her poem.
Silence is a sad sob in the night
Wow! I say. Oh Man! Could you repeat that?
She shrugs, tosses off the line, which circles the room.
A boy with a cut on his finger shakes it and puts it in his mouth.
Silence is an empty jar in an old house.
He shows me the hurt finger again.
A little cowgirl stands and waits for quiet to say,
Silence is a window not opened
We smile tenderly at each other.
Nod. In this sudden outbreak of splendor we are happy to be together.
Finally, the boy who was working on his drawing says,
Silence is in a bottle and a basket
This is the end of class time, and everyone lines up
to exchange high fives and congratulations.
Silence is when my baby sister is asleep
Silence is cats wondering.
I roll this afternoon around in my mouth.
Something sweeter than a ripe peach or custard,
How close the soul can come to the skin
When the body is still so new.
