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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."

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