Portside

Lament
By Debra Marquart

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 see them on the maps    
eleven thousand active wells    one every two miles

all your indicators are up     north dakota    
          four hundred 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 antelope, 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

Debra Marquart is a professor of English in the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Environment at Iowa State University and the senior editor of Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment.  Marquart is the author of five books, including three poetry collections—Small Buried Things, Everything's a Verb, and From Sweetness—and a short story collection, The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Stories, which draws on her experiences as a female road musician.   Narrative Magazine selected Marquart’s poem, “Door-to-Door,” as one of the top five poems to appear in Narrative in 2013.