Poetry: Selections from Ron Riekki

We’re in a hotel and there’s thirteen of us planning to sleep in one room, which is not allowed, but you have to be caught,

 

so the plan is to not get caught,

except we’re loud

and loudness is not a good way to be slick,

and we’re loud because we’re all boxers,

except me,

except I kind of was,

except I was horrible,

but the rest of the guys in the room are,

good,

great,

a mix,

nuts,

which is helpful,

all from a mining town,

a U.P. mining town,

which is helpful,

and with dads who were boxers in their own way,

not boxing in rings

for money

and fame

or micro-fame,

like us,

but rather

dads who boxed with their jobs

or fist-fought with their pack of hack-inducing cigarettes

or punched walls because their lives didn’t end up the way they wanted them to end up,

so it was more like the alcoholic unemployed boxers of the world

as fathers,

and,

by the way,

we had enough testosterone

in that crappy hotel room

to fill

seven thousand kegs

in seven thousand dorm rooms,

except we were high schoolers,

mostly,

a couple of guys who could be in college,

but they weren’t in college,

instead

they were training

and punching bags until their knuckles bled

and our coach,

was the evil coach

in the karate movies,

just like that,

the evil coach

who told us to kill them in the ring

and we asked what he meant by that

and he said to punch them in the throat

or the balls

or the kidneys

if the ref wasn’t looking

and to get in one extra jab

after the bell rings,

and I was benching 350 at the time

because I had all the anger

of the world

in my cerebellum,

and my cousin

who was probably the baddest ass of them all

was taking psychology,

the only one of us

actually taking a college class,

one solitary college class,

and he was taking it,

he said,

because he wanted to learn how to ‘destroy his opponent’s mind’in the ring

and he’d ask his psychology professor

at the community college,

hand raised,

in front of the class,

asking,

How do you get into someone’s head so that they realize you’re going to crush them if they even try?

and the teacher would say,

“What?”

and there was a knock on the door,

the hotel room door,

because that’s what hotel room doors do,

and we all got quiet,

yell-whispering, “Shut the fuck up!”

but when thirteen teenagers whisper,

“Shut the fuck up!”

it’s pretty loud,

and a voice in the hall

shouted for us to open up

and we all froze

and we could hear the key in the lock

and one of us whispered loud as hell,

“Turn off the lights,”

so we dove for the lights,

turning them all off,

and someone grabbed the window curtain

and tried to pull it closed,

but only got halfway

when the door opened

and we all just leaped

into sleeping positions,

pretending we were all asleep,

all thirteen of us,

huddled in the bed

with our clothes on

and some sleeping on the floor,

except we weren’t sleeping,

but pretending,

and one idiot

even

got in the bathtub,

pretending he was sleeping

in the tub

and the manager just stood

in the center of the room

with all these idiot child-boxers

lying all over the place

and he said, “OK, that’s enough.

You all need to vacate this room

or I call the police”

and then all of us,

like we’d scripted it,

sprang up

with our athlete bodies,

our protein intake addictions,

our iron ore soot heads,

and just ran

in every direction,

out the front door,

through a window,

through the sliding door to the balcony

where we jumped

from the second floor

into grass,

rolling,

like ninjas on fire,

like gymnasts with chlamydia,

like funeral parlor attendees with trampoline training,

and the night’s shadows welcomed us

and I remember us

laughing

like blind witches

and I remember how none of us had bought the room

so whoever did

was left behind

with the manager

standing over him

looking down

and realizing

he was staring

at some kid

who’d done so much steroids

that his arteries were about to explode

and then they did,

every artery

detonating

like the dynamite

at the mines

so that the hotel manager

was covered

head to foot

by all of the absent fathers

throughout history.

We’re at a Burger King and my cousin’s drunk

 

and a girl comes in

with big breasts

and my cousin sees this

and says out loud, “Wow”

and then realizes how loud

he has said this,

but he couldn’t help it,

but they were ‘wow’ breasts

and the girl hears this

and my cousin has his back to her now,

embarrassed,

eating his fries,

head down,

and the girl starts walking towards us

and she sees me see her

and she puts her finger up to her mouth

to make the shhh sign

and I’m wondering if she is about to punch

my cousin in the head

and if that’s what she’s about to do,

I have an incredible view

of what’s about to happen

and

to be honest

my cousin could use a good slap to the skull,

so I’m all on board

with this stranger

whose breasts

as they get closer

I realize

are more than ‘wow’ breasts;

they are breasts

that deserve

their own

“Star-Spangled Banner,”

whatever ‘spangled’

means

and this girl

straight

from the clubs

like us

and exhausted

from the night

like us

comes up behind my cousin,

directly behind him

like a villain

in a horror movie

and she takes both of those spangling breasts

in each of her hands,

lifts them up

and plops them down

on top of my cousin’s head

and he looks at me

with eyes like a child

just baptized

in a Christian school

made out of

Turkish delight

and my cousin’s shocked smile is heavenly

and cherubic

and blessed,

my cousin’s face reveals

sheer appreciation

and wonder

and awe

of the numinous

and the girl looks at me and smiles

and takes her breasts and

puts them back in her purse and

turns away

and goes up to the counter

to order

and my cousin is speechless

and the world

is beautiful

and the streetlamps

are obscenely pregnant with light

and the windows

shimmer

with all of our bodies

in the reflection

as if we

are cinematic

and

sometimes

for split seconds

we are.

In boot camp, the drill instructor told us that if we fucked up, we had better

 

stick to whatever stupidity we’d just done,

saying that if he said “left face”

and one of us boneheads did a right face,

that we’d better stick with that idiotic left face

we’d just done, even if the whole rest of the unit

was now facing in the exact opposite direction

and if any of us

realized what we’d done wrong

and suddenly just turned around,

pretending like nothing had happened,

well,

then,

he said,

he’d grab us by the throat and yank out our larynxes and throw the bloody guts of it into an envelope and mail it to our goddamn grandmothers,

so we realized

we had to just eat our mistakes

or

better yet

just not make any,

which was my plan,

so I’d always listen

like my life depended on it,

because it did,

because those sadistic bastards

would come up with punishments

that would make you want to

cut off your testicles

so that you could stuff them in

your ears

so you wouldn’t have to listen

to your own agonizing groans

and

anyway

long poem short

we were in a field

because that’s what you do in boot camp,

they take you to fields

and swimming pools

like in your youth,

except they ruin those memories

by turning the swimming pool

into a place where you almost drown

on a daily basis

and the field

is where you march

until your feet

ask you politely

to please be sawed off

and replaced

with metal

because the callouses now

are so large that they

have broadcasting careers

in Ethiopia,

and we were marching

and marching

and marching

in February,

which is worse than March,

much colder,

tons of clouds

that all looked like

they had different forms of cancer,

one cloud that I’m sure had a lymphoma

or several

and there was no time to enjoy the slow death of the clouds

because the drill instructor drilled for us

“To the left flank, march!”

which means you march to the left flank,

which isn’t too hard

if you’re not absolutely dumb as a stop sign in Hell,

except one kid,

of course,

did a “to the right flank, march!” in his head

and his body

and he turned and

just started marching

in the exact opposite direction

from the other

79 of us,

just this one moron

who I could sense

was getting further and further

away

and the drill instructor

just kept us

marching

and we had a whole football field

to march across

but the other kid

who was alone now

and committed

to his error and

just kept marching,

but he was running out of room,

coming up to a fence,

and so,

military bearing

and all,

he committed to it

and just kept marching into the fence

over and over

pushing his body into the fence

and bouncing off it

and I didn’t see this,

but was told

later by someone

in another company

who saw it all

and the drill instructor

yelled,

“Company halt!”

and we halted

and apparently

we were a company,

but a company of teens

who didn’t know how to march

or think

or shave

or anything

but we halted

and the kid—

his name was Maliwicki and

I’ll remember that name

forever

because the drill instructor

ran all the way

over to him

and started screaming,

“Maliwicki,

are you going to march into

that goddamn fence all day!

Or are you going

to bless us

with the presence

of your fucked-up teeth!”

and

I have to be honest

but

a couple weeks later,

I caught Maliwicki

in the head (the bathroom to all you civilians out there)

and Maliwicki was looking

in the mirror

at his teeth

and you could tell

he was thinking,

“Are they really that fucked up looking?”

and they weren’t

but it didn’t matter, because now

it was in his head,

and for the rest of his life

whenever he would see fence,

he would think of marching

and whenever he thought of marching

he would think of fence,

the two married to each other

for a billion years

and his fucked-up teeth

would remember fence

and that fence would remember his teeth and

I remember how they put Maliwicki

on Officer’s Sidewalk

where he had to stand

all night long,

no sleep,

holding a fake wooden gun

up above his head,

which is impossible to do

for more than five minutes,

but he had to do it all night

with the drill instructor watching him

from a window

until the drill instructor left

and Maliwicki couldn’t turn around

to see if he was still there

and at night

the racoons watched him

standing there

with that stupid fake gun causing his arms

to shake like an epileptic

and

this world

is the stupidest thing

ever invented.

Sometimes the boss likes it when you’re considering suicide

 

It’s called power

and some people just love it,

eat that shit up,

especially the more you’re pondering it,

where they get to realize,

“Wow, I’m collapsing his will to live,

how special am I?”

and then

there are bosses

who are just normal

and neutral

and

Jesus Christ,

do I love the ones who are neutral

and just leave you alone,

but the ones who are like giant ogres of death with fangs and knives

own the world

and get promoted

and eat babies

during their off-hours

and do it

with a passion

unequalled

by mankind.

I used to be afraid of ghosts, but then I got old

 

and now ghosts see me

and they realize I’m almost ghost myself

so they leave me alone,

which means

my room

at night

is empty,

when it used to be jam-packed

with a dozen

or more

of those floating bastards

when I was a child,

just ghost after ghost after ghost after ghost after ghost

hovering over my bed

and I could feel their presence,

the sheets wrapped tight around my feet

so that a toe

sure as hell

didn’t stick out,

because if it did,

I was sure

it would be torn off

and eaten

like an M&M,

but now

I sleep

and I don’t even care

if my hand is hanging

off the bed,

because the ghosts will look

at my hand

and think, “Who the hell wants an old-ass hand”

and they just let it dangle there

looking down at their own hands

that used to clutch blankets

back when they were alive

and young

and gorgeously

terrified.

Ron Riekki has been awarded a 2014 Michigan Notable Book, 2015 The Best Small Fictions, 2016 Shenandoah Fiction Prize, 2016 IPPY Award, 2020 Rhysling Anthology inclusion, 2019 Red Rock Film Fest Award, 2020 Dracula Film Festival Vladutz Trophy, 2019 Très Court International Film Festival Audience Award and Grand Prix, and 2022 Pushcart Prize. Right now, Riekki's listening to Trent Reznor's "Technically, Missing" from the Gone Girl score.