Monday, February 24, 2014

Ron Riekki- Three Poems

Un-unemployment

The people who lost their jobs didn’t
lose them.  They are still right there,

easily found.  You can’t lose something
that big.  These aren’t car keys we’re

talking about.  These are the things that
make car keys possible.  The car keys

aren’t missing either.  They are non-
existent.  Or actually, they exist, but

the car no longer exists.  So the key
is worthless.  Or not worthless, but

worth less.  Much less.  It’s just a key.
No door.  No engine.  It’s like a pill

without a body.  A wolf without a pig.
The wolf just sits there.  It takes a deep

breath, worthless.  Worth less.  Just air
sitting in its lungs.  A brick house

flipping it off.  A brick house just
lettin’ it all hang out.  The lady’s stacked

and that’s a fact and by stacked we mean
flesh, which has connotations of Shylock,

lawyers, bloody show, butcher shops,
and other implications of work.



The Paramedic Said, “Doctors are Stupid,”

which isn’t exactly a stunning sentence in and of
itself.  Just doctors and stupidity.  Nothing much more

to the thought.  Gastroenterologists somewhere are discussing
epistemology, but this medic wants to make things simple.

Just M.D.s and dumb.  An equal sign.  A taut tautology.
For tots.  “Thems is dummies.”  And the Headless Horseman

is out there somewhere complaining about Ichabod Cranes,
jealous of his head.  “Ichabod Cranes have heads.”  And

they do.  A big one.  Or not big.  A normal size one.
But big compared to someone who just has air for a head.

In fact, the Headless Horseman does have a head,
if you count oxygen.  Which he doesn’t need to breathe,

because that’s what he is.  The paramedic has killed seven
people.  He tells us this in class.  A sense of pride.

Because he’s saved around a thousand or two.  Maybe three.
Maybe not.  Maybe less.  Maybe less than one head.



On the Train from the Czech Republic to Hungary

I sit, with a cold
forming in my chest.
It’s counting to three-
thousand.  Outside
the window, the ghosts
of trees kick by.


Short bio: Ron Riekki wrote the novel U.P. and edited The Way North (Wayne State University Press, http://wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/way-north, a 2014 Michigan Notable Book).

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