Ron Riekki

Poetry

 

 

 

Costs

 

The mountains of the dead rise; its happiness,

the lungs in their eyes, the apneic pose where hills

 

choked by sun submit themselves to the Goddess,

the triple-falcon, mastering like thieves.  Here, my lungs

 

seems healed.  I take in a breath, smothering death’s

stillness.  The danger is the cliff, its plurality, my loss.

 

 

 

Union Springs, AL

 

Teaching, I told the prisoners,

I’m going to help you write better,

 

so that you can connect with your family

through letters.  One of them raised his hand

 

and said, What if you killed everyone in your family?

That’s a good question.  Or a bad question.  An evil question.

 

I thought of giving an evil answer, a holy answer, no answer.

I went for the ladder, put it up against the chalkboard,

 

and walked, up through the ceiling, above the roof

where I could look down on all the police

 

shooting black kids, the white guy

at the shooting range putting guns

 

in his mouth to see which one

fits the best.  I asked them

 

where the bathroom is

and they told me

 

In hell.

 

 

 

God

 

I understood God

when I was a Religion major.

When I dated a Christian,

I started to lose my faith.

I started believing in the Devil

after she left me.

Then I found the Devil

was really just someone you try

to bash in their head at breakfast.

As I got older, I had this soft God,

someone to make me free of worry

about death.  It was a God

for hospital visits.

 

I liked the God

of my childhood,

when I had fevers

and prayed

he’d keep me alive,

the image of the ceiling

opening up and this head

like a universe

peeking in at me,

telling me

everything was going to be

fucked up,

but to be OK with that.

 

 

 

In Paramedic School, My First Dead Patient

 

During the lecture on pediatrics, the instructor says,

If I’m dying in a vat of Coors Light, let me go down

 

at least twice before you save me.  I write this on the tourniquet,

assess the patient for signs of perfection.  We have five liters

 

of circulating blood and all of them are on the bottom

of the taxicab.  “Once there was a way to get back home”

 

on the radio that somehow, miraculously, has managed to stay

alive, but for the body, it is after hours, the doors all locked,

 

the realization that you’ll have to sneak in through the window.

 

 

 

Autobiography

 

In the Navy, I saw a helicopter on fire,

three people inside, the telephone wires

 

bent, ready to snap—the way that life

just hangs there, tired, evidence of Flame.

 

 

 

Ron Riekki's books include U.P: a novel, The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works (a 2014 Michigan Notable Book and finalist for the 2014 Midwest Book Award, 2014 Eric Hoffer Book Award, Foreword Book of the Year Award, and 2014 Next Generation Indie Book Award, http://wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/way-north), and Here: Women Writing on Michigan's Upper Peninsula, http://msupress.org/books/book/?id=50-1D0-3479#.VKZ4kmTF-PU