GAS Featured Poet: Ron Riekki

 

Ron Riekki has been awarded a 2014 Michigan Notable Book, 2015 The Best Small Fictions, 2016 Shenandoah Fiction Prize, 2016 IPPY Award, 2019 Red Rock Film Fest Award, 2019 Best of the Net finalist, 2020 Dracula Film Festival Vladutz Trophy, 2019 Très Court International Film Festival Audience Award and Grand Prix, 2020 Rhysling Anthology inclusion, and 2022 Pushcart Prize.  Right now, Riekki's listening to Gary Jules' "Mad World."

When I worked in the prison, it reminded me of the military

 

and the military reminded me of being an EMT and when

I was on the ambulance there were all these cities that were

buzzing by—Orlando and Los Angeles and Detroit and

San Francisco—and they all looked the same, the exact

goddamn same with those median strips flashing like

urban Morse Code, and the stroke patient punched me,

 

and in boot camp it was the same, the suicides so quick

and subtle, like blinking, and the prison was the same,

with the inmates stabbing themselves in hopes of getting

put on an ambulance to escape to the hospital, which was

better than the prison, with nurses in nursing uniforms and

football games on waiting room TVs and I remember all

 

the barbed wire of the prisons and all the barbed wire on

our bases, how I had to pick dead rabbits out of them, how

that was my job for weeks, a punishment for existing, and

I remember one day when the rain was light and I sat there

in uniform with a war going on and I was nowhere near it

and I opened my mouth and caught the rain and I loved it.

 

I once got to play the title character in a horror film

 

and I remember a scene where I was dragging this girl

through a swamp and the director would yell ‘cut’ and

I’d bend over to try to help her up and she’d say ‘no’

and lift herself up and we’d walk back to ‘square one,’

the starting point where we’d wait to see if the director

 

wanted us to do it again and he did, so she’d lie down

on the ground and I’d wrap my hand around her fake

hair and she’d grab my wrists so that I wasn’t actually

pulling her by her hair, but she was hanging onto me,

and the ground was wet from a recent rain and it was

 

February in North Carolina, at night, cold, and all she

wore was underwear and I’d drag her again and when

we got to the point where he yelled ‘cut,’ I’d try and

help her up, but again, she’d say ‘no,’ angry that I’d

even try and we’d walk back to square one and do it

 

again, and I wondered why she’d always say ‘no,’ but

later, when I saw the film, and she’d go on to win best

actress and I’d go on to win nothing, I realized that she

needed to hate me in the film and she needed to hate me

the whole time, not turn it off and on like a light switch

 

and when I thought I was dragging her through swamp,

it was really her that was dragging me, that I wasn’t an

actor at that level, that she was so entirely immersed

that she only saw me as monster, and even later, when

we were back in the hotel, she wouldn’t even look at

 

me, and I went to bed and I felt bad, almost like I was

guilty of something.  And maybe I was.  Maybe it was

all of patriarchy in those moments.  Maybe I was just

an amateur.  Maybe I didn’t understand Method.  May-

be she didn’t want to be in a horror film, but wanted

 

to be doing something that would earn her an Oscar.

I don’t know.  I’d lie in bed and realize that the next

day I was going to kill her.  And I didn’t want to kill

her.  I wanted to be the good guy in the film.  Later,

on the final day of filming, I talked to the actor who

 

played the good guy.  He was kind of famous.  Was

on a TV show I didn’t watch very often.  I said some-

thing about how it sucks to be the villain; his eyes lit

up, almost in anger.  He said he had the boring role.

All he did was look good and say clichés.  He said

 

that if I was going to be a killer in a movie, I had

layers upon layers I needed to explore.  He said if

he had my role, he would have went to the nearby

prisons, would have tried to meet the Death Row

guys.  I felt stupid.  He looked like a supermodel.

 

His cheeks were all empty.  His forehead was an

entire career.  I had to kill him at the end.  When

I did it, I sort of enjoyed it.  It was my best scene

in the film.  He looked like nobody had said ‘no’

to him in his entire life.  I got it right on the first

 

take.  The director yelled ‘cut.’  We disappeared

from each other’s lives.  We were brilliant.  We

were young.  We didn’t go on to do great things.

We just disappeared.  Maybe that’s what we all

did so well.  We were incredible at disappearing.

 

 

 I’m afraid of my mother, I’m afraid to lose her

 

but there is nothing you can control

in this life.  She told me one time

about how much she loves sneaking

 

off to the softball field in our home-

town.  Back then, there was only 3

channels on television.  Back then,

 

there was so little to do.  The soft-

ball games would be packed.  All

these residents from all over town

 

would come, line the fence.  It was

glorious.  You felt as if you were

at a Presidential inauguration.  All

 

this air just puzzling with buzzing

and fizzing and guzzling with sheer

hope and rage and skill and lust.

 

I felt like the world would explode

at those times.  But my mother

would go when it was empty,

 

when the games were over, and

it was just quiet and mosquitoes

and stars, and she’d go with her

 

best friend and they’d smoke and

eat oranges and she said nothing

felt better in the world to her than

 

nicotine and oranges, that they

went together like Heaven and

God.  And she told me that and

 

it stuck with me.  And she’s quiet

now and tells me she has trouble

thinking and I get quiet too, afraid

 

I will lose her.  And I will.  Because

the world is beautiful and cruel . . .