What Are You Doing, Sheryl?
Moms unload their kids
for Kiddee Day on the midway.
Cheap rides to kill an afternoon
so hot us ride jockeys get away with stripping
down to muscle shirts. Nobody
shirtless on the job, that’s the rule.
We watch the moms watching us
behind their sunglasses. Bringing Johnny
back and back in line, making longer
conversation at us the longer
we let Johnny ride. Till it comes time
to run him back home, him screaming
he’d had way too much and wants more.
Near dusk just the moms and their best
girlfriends come strolling out of nowhere
all made up fresh. Nothing else that late
but stall till closing, set the ladies sidesaddle
on the merry-go-round, bum their smokes,
and let ‘em circle us all they need for free.
On the beach after we shut down,
we sit around a stick-fire,
passing 20s of malt liquor, inventing
who we are one lie at a time.
Laughing too loud and louder
the more we get twisted.
What are you doing, Sheryl? says
a tall man who’d walked up behind.
We all stand and puff our chests
like we’d defend her. Hubby
backs off weak-kneed on his own,
and Sheryl does right, walking away
and letting him chase her.
Another rule: If outside trouble finds you
don’t bring it home. There’s Sheryls
out there everywhere, some willing
to drive and try us again next town.
We don’t want no bad mess.
Though it’s fun sometimes to get cozy
and push up real close by.
The Pie Lady
Her pie wagon steamed early mornings
—far end of the midway—
with smells of home-baked sweets.
She chose me, of all the ride-jockeys
who schemed for a slice of her,
to drive her every few day for sacks of flour
and apples she could have managed
easily on her own. And we’d ride laughing,
two carnies shoved up in tight spaces
who never minded sitting close by.
I was just a kid, mostly, back then.
Saved up wages and bought new jeans,
light blue, almost white. Ruined them
first day with a smear of axel grease
across my thigh. Upon which the Pie Lady
gladly set to scrubbing me with a wet rag
and her own brand of miracle problem solver.
She worked and worked unstaining me.
Take ‘em off, she said and I did,
while the ovens bubbled with pie.
As founding editor of Many Voices Press, Lowell Jaeger compiled Poems Across the Big Sky, an anthology of Montana poets, and New Poets of the American West, an anthology of poets from 11 Western states. His third collection of poems, Suddenly Out of a Long Sleep (Arctos Press) was published in 2009 and was a finalist for the Paterson Award. His fourth collection, WE, (Main Street Rag Press) was published in 2010. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Montana Arts Council and winner of the Grolier Poetry Peace Prize. Most recently Jaeger was awarded the Montana Governor’s Humanities Award for his work in promoting thoughtful civic discourse.
