the woman from noxon
this tiny clark fork valley community so isolated and
seemingly depressed the only stir is tobys a bar and
its patrons fat men in beards flannel shirts and hats
wooden mugs hang above everybodys heads black
ribbons tied to their handles and names printed on them
in indelible ink a graveyard of sorts and maybe
the only public acknowledgement that these men
actually existed and someone remembers them
a real montana bar outside across the road and veterans
park the river runs slowly past on its way to lake
pend oreille in idaho from the mountains west of butte
slowed to unavoidable stagnation by a progress that left
this town and most of montana somewhere behind is this
the mighty river you traversed and so named for yourself
nearly two hundred years ago william clark i ask
rhetorically but would nevertheless welcome an answer
but its not her land no more than its mine no more
than its the explorers or the homesteaders or even the
chinamen that built the railroad and drown on
payday the rivers edge still littered with shards of
their porcelain purple dragons its the kootenays the
salishs and its their ghosts that travel this river i see them
at night but i doubt i ll find any answers not here not in
this bar the talk is about logging and outfitting and how
nothing ever changes and those fucking californians
buying up all the land and how none of the locals can
afford to own anymore damned earthquakes damned water
shortages damned mexicans hippies and vietnam vets found
this place and settled here twenty or thirty years ago all for
the same reasons to hide or escape eventually the vets just
faded away and the hippies bought sheep ranches in eastern
montana and coffee plantations in hawaii a few remnants
remain like the couple that walked in a few minutes ago
and plopped themselves down in front of a video poker
machine gloria and meathead im reminded the hair the beard
the moccasins the beads the religiously persecuted and
overtly zealous and consciously racist replaced the hippies
and vets and theyre still here visible audible and organized
and sitting next to me least we aint got no niggers
most everyone is involved in some sort of illegal activity
the old timers its weed and poaching the newcomers meth
coke and porn neither pay much taxes even children are
naturally suspicious and come to think of it where are all
the children that one over there the one that looks like van
heflin hes as line bred as my german wirehaired or
kamehameha hey maybe hes royalty a closed community
cant be any other way the timber industry crashed some
years before nafta and its the democrats fault in this town
too proud for liberals although nearly everybodys disabled
and on government money but just like a poor mans
shoes it shows its own poverty the clapboard houses sag
beneath chronic fatigue and drunkenness they need
a fresh coat of paint and the laughter of women but
the women left with the timber industry and the men went
hunting up highway two hundred and up bull river road
a ways the wealthy from somewhere else live in their log
homes unaware that log homes were the doublewides
of a hundred years before but they dont stay not for long
they usually leave after two years the winters the isolation
the mosquitoes and they blame the locals for most
everything does it really matter they rarely come to town
and no one talks to them anyway and we leave this place
for the bars in missoula im the town baby she tells me
it took the whole community to raise me well maybe so
but that was a long time ago baby cause you aint so
young no more and she pulls back her raven hair with
a bandana in the vanity mirror she laughs at me or
somebody else back there
ISBN 1-59661-019-0
38 pages $9
Jeffrey Lockwood’s poems bring an image and a clear understanding together, fast, hard against the heart. And then there is a pause. So we can stop and think. Still that chatter. Whether it’s a narrative poem about Indian land or a haiku for the soul, his poems do what they’re supposed to do. They give us a moment. They are a gift.
—Mariana Romo-Carmona
author of Living at Night; Speaking Like an Immigrant
Stories. Stories. Yes, good stories essential and inherent in the human condition. Whether lived, told, heard in the Great Plains of the Midwest or in the deserts and canyons of the Southwest. Or in the mountains of Montana. Stories that make us see into ourselves. That’s the best thing about Jeff Lockwood’s voice here in these low mountains. Essentially his poems are the stories that make us see into ourselves.
—Simon J. Ortiz,
author of Out There Somewhere, After and Before the Lightning, The Good Rainbow Road
Jeff Lockwood has the rare gift to say a great deal in a very few words. He can capture the human spirit discovering itself in nature in just a couple of lines. And when he tells stories, he evokes the pain and joy of human struggle in concise and vivid scenes.
—Rachel Pollack,
author of Godmother Night, winner of the World Fantasy Award
Jeff Lockwood now lives in the Cabinet Mountains in northwestern Montana, although he still calls Michigan’s Upper Peninsula home. He’s a graduate of Goddard College’s MFA program and a former Fullbright Scholar. Jeff is a member of the Chippewa tribe.