Ron Riekki
In the guard shack,
there are no words, because we are not
allowed to have words. I am paid to be
a tree, too. No chair, because, they say,
if we have a chair, we will sleep. And
you can be fired for reading a book, so
I just stop my life here. I never speak
here, because there is no one to speak
to. The stars drip across the sky. I’m
allowed to look at the sky, or, at least,
they cannot tell if I am looking up at
sky. In the distance, there are fires
burning in slow motion. I am paid
to be eyeballs. I am to report any-
thing out of place, but everything is
always in place, endlessly in place,
the deer that come each night, silent,
their mouths exploding with grass.
I have no feelings on these nights,
no emotions, like the blue moon,
its sickly face, cyanotic, its throat
choked by the darkness. I would
give both of my eyes for sleep, for
these hours to end, looking at all
these roofs in the city below, so
ugly, as if a dragon has stomped
them flat and ashed them. I am
old. How could I have had all of
those years where I could have set
myself up to be anywhere else,
doing anything, with meaning, in-
stead of being out here, a part of
the forest, how no one cares about
this road, these leaves, the smoke
that gives me a headache. I love
poetry and the world mocks me.
As a gift, sometimes, I am given Foot Patrol,
a thing we capitalize, as if it is a name,
a city, a monster, a holiday. And it is.
I am free at this time, free to follow
the route my boss orders me to take,
the buildings filled with cancer all
around us, me. The night stands up.
My feet feel like clouds, storm clouds.
I go into buildings sometimes and they
do everything they can to try to haunt
me, but I am too tired to care, the ghosts
knowing this, leaving me alone to roam,
like them. And we are both getting paid.
The ghosts get paid in minutes. One guard
one night found a dead body. For years,
he was a hero, because there was a story
to tell about him, about the body, and
the tale would shift, from shift to shift,
but he was always at its center, along
with the body, the both of them that
became one, the corpse guard that we
all are, and the corpse, guarded, left
there, the rumor that it was a home-
less man, sick, alone, his encampment
tent that looked like an upside-down
bowl, and, inside, the body. Who
would have gone in there? Who
would be crazy enough to look?
Who would even find it? It, hid,
in an area with No Trespassing
signs everywhere, and how I’ll
walk, some nights, and seeing
one of those signs will trigger
my mind to repeat: and forgive
us our trespasses, as we forgive
those who trespass against us,
and lead us and the rest, and
the signs make me think of
signs and symptoms, of sick-
ness, of the nauseous fence
that traps us inside and birds
that cough the night away
and the collapsed parking lot
where you realize the concrete
has died. And this is a blessing,
to be free, to walk, to not be
stuck in the shack where you
can’t piss, the pain of holding
it in, but, now, roaming, I pass
bathroom after bathroom and
I can pick any one that I want
to go into. Like I’m a god.
In the morning, at the gate, the first car pulls up
and the driver, inside, groggy, caffeine
in his guts, looks at me, which so many
don’t do, and he stays there, after I press
the button to lift the gate, and he says,
You know, a guy like you, you should
go to school, get a degree. And I say,
I’m too old. And he laughs and hits
the gas, and he’s gone, and I’m alone
and I speak my first words of the night,
saying, I have a Ph.D., and so far away
I can see the river and it’s not moving
and I wonder if the river has given up.
Ron Riekki’s books include Blood/Not Blood Then the Gates (Middle West Press, poetry), My Ancestors are Reindeer Herders and I Am Melting in Extinction (Loyola University Maryland’s Apprentice House Press, hybrid), Posttraumatic (Hoot ‘n’ Waddle, nonfiction), and U.P. (Ghost Road Press, fiction). Right now, Riekki’s listening to Leslie & Ivyrise's "Je te donne."