To spend a blustery spring afternoon walking the acres of WildWay with Marlene Ehresman, the longtime Executive Director of the Iowa Wildlife Center, is to enter into the dream of the place.
Marquart, Debra. “Healing the Wild.” The Iowan. November/December 2022: 17 – 27. [link]
In the dojo, Master Yun taught us that to break the board you must
level your fist, your foot, your knifed palm not at the board itself
but beyond the board, through the board, trained on the torso of the one
who grasps the board. Only then the broken board becomes a certainty.
In this spirit, I will state the obvious forgone conclusion of our time,
we must leave it in the ground. [link]
Marquart, Debra. “Leave it in the Ground.” Five poem sequence. Manchester Poetry Prize, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. Shortlist Publication. December, 2023.
world’s tiniest carnivore
eight inches long, two ounces.
you might think it’s cute
but razor teeth, scimitar claws.
the least weasel steals
the burrows of rats and moles
“In Defense of the Least Weasel: Poem & Scientific Note.” Voices from the Prairie: A Publication of Humanities Iowa (Fall/Winter 2022): 8-9. [link]
In the spring of 1975, I was walking back to my dorm room at Bismarck Junior College and studying the comments my Freshman English teacher had written on my final paper. All semester, the class had written pragmatic compositions, mostly research papers, but for this final assignment, our teacher asked us to write a personal essay.
“What A Writer Needs.” Humanities North Dakota Magazine. June, 2021: 4-10. [link]
When the First Love of the One You Love Dies
something in you goes silent, too.
didn’t she lap up all the sweetness
with a hungry tongue, the hot fudge
sundaes he delivered to her
front porch swing, summer nights
after his first job folding men’s shirts
at pomeroy’s department store.
Marquart, Debra. “When the First Love of the One You Love Dies” North American Review. 306.3 (Fall 2021). [link]
bless this night
bless the small bladders of dogs
urgent under moonlight
Marquart, Debra. “Gratitude with Dogs Under Stars.” Des Moines Register. Iowa Poet Laureate poem to commemorate Iowa’s 175th Anniversary. 23 Dec. 2021. [link]
They loom over us like sequoias, our parents. In my first holy communion photos, they flank me, grave and unsmiling in formal black clothes—my father’s wool suit, my mother’s boucle skirt, long gloves, and short jacket.
“At 79, My Mother Decides to Plant Trees.” Fourth Genre. 23.1 (2021): 171-180. [link]
I’m going to tell you what happened to Musa up front, so that you don’t get too attached to him like I did over the two weeks that so many of us got swept up in the search for him. I’m telling you the ending first not to make you sadder, but because I think there’s something else worth saying here, something beyond the story of the death of a lost dog.
“The Death of a Lost Dog.” The Iowan. March 2021: 52-57. [link]
Frack
first the bakken then the three forks formation even deeper
the oil patch, they call it
two miles below the surface
oil embedded in shale
late devonian remnants of the anoxic sea the coastal carbonite layer
deposited when the middlewest was inner ocean
“Small Buried Things: Essay on Fracking.” Bearing Witness: The Human Rights Case Against Fracking and Climate Change, edited by Kathleen Dean Moore and Tom Kerns. Oregon State University Press, Spring 2021. 108-114. [link]
At the Bismarck Airport, I pick up the jar of chokecherry jelly in the gift shop before boarding my flight back to Iowa. Not sure when I’ll make it home to North Dakota again.
“Taste of Home.” On Second Thought | Sense of Place Issue. Humanities North Dakota (April) 2021: 36-40. [link]
For years, I’ve encouraged students to “tell it cool” when narrating a tale that is harrowing or emotional. A cool narrator can be a buoy in rough waters. I’ve always thought this advice came from Hemingway, but at this moment as I search my bookshelves for the place where Hemingway said it, I can’t put my finger on the quote.
“Tell It Cool: On Writing with Restraint.” New Ohio Review: The Personal Political. Feb. 2020. [link]
A few years ago, I was giving a talk at the Fargo Public Library about researching and writing my book, The Horizontal World, which is a memoir about growing up a rebellious farmer’s daughter on a North Dakota wheat farm. In the 1970s, I was a college student at Moorhead State University and then later a Fargo-based road musician. I wanted to come back to the library to express my gratitude for their services, which kept me alive during a period of crisis in my life.
“On the Ephemerality of Things: Thoughts on the Demise of a Literary Press.” High Plains Reader. 5 May 2020. [link]
come
cold eye corrective, come pendulum
take wrecking ball to venerable walls
“Come November.” Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy, edited by Simmons Buntin, Elizabeth Dodd, and Derek Sheffield, Trinity University Press, 2020, pp. 107-108. [link]
The placards I walked through. The wet raincoat on a hook. The questionnaire on a clipboard placed before me.
“Some Things About that Day.” Best of Brevity: Twenty Groundbreaking Years of Flash Nonfiction, edited by Dinty Moore and Zoë Bossiere. Rose Metal Press, 2020, pp. 202-203. [link]
We charm the waitress in her colorful sombrero at Paradiso Mexican Restaurant when our party of seven arrives. Three tables pushed together against a long booth, the scrape of metal on ceramic tile. It’s $2 margarita pitchers this afternoon, and all the chips and salsa you can eat. The piped-in Tejano music insists on our liveliness, harmonizing trumpets and a tenor sax with a two-step accordion.
“The Unhappy Hour.” Ascent Magazine. 6 November 2019. [link]
1. Gayle McCormickBaby, It’s You. The high point of Gayle McCormick’s career—when the song she recorded with the band Smith reached number five on the charts—is also where her path becomes obscured. You’ve probably never heard of her. But if you were alive during the fall of 1969, some cell in your body retains a sliver of her voice.
“Buried Voices.” Story of the Week. Narrative Magazine. 7 June 2018. [link] Full Version
Somewhere between Hibbing and New York, the red rust streets of the Iron Range and the shipping yards of the Atlantic, somewhere between Zimmerman and Dylan was a pit stop in Fargo… –“Dylan’s Lost Years”
The day after the fire, all their equipment charred in a ditch and blown to ashes, the thin axle of the truck lying on its side like the burned-out frame of a dragonfly … –“This New Quiet”
“This New Quiet” and “Dylan’s Lost Years.” New Microfiction. Eds. James Thomas and Robert Scotellaro. W.W. Norton, 2018. [link]