Poetry: Selections from Ron Riekki

The feminist in the improv class

likes to deny us

in every scene she comes into

and she says she is sick

of the boys

in the class

yelling over her

and the boys in the room

are 32

and 29

and 43

and 37

and 28 and

one of them says,

“Just say ‘yes, and’ sometimes”

and the feminist in the improv class

says that she has “reported on students in the class”

and there are two other feminists in the class,

but they say “yes, and”

and one reminds me of Sarah Silverman

and the other one reminds me of Janeane Garofalo

but the feminist in the improv class reminds me of the “lighten up, Francis” guy in Stripes,

how she gets offended when a guy in the class says “Bitchin’ Camaro,”

which is a Dead Milkmen song,

but what she says is,

“Patriarchy,

pure patriarchy”

and

“how dare you say the b- word” and

and she says

it makes her “sick”

and we were laughing

before

and now we’re not

and she repeats

that she is reporting on us

and we wonder

to who and

she sometimes does scenes where,

to be honest,

she’s kinda racist

and we talk about that

after class

and one guy

calls her a Karen

behind her back

and another guy

calls her Karen

in front of her back

in one of the improv scenes he does with her

and she wears a shirt to class one day that says JESUS

on it

and she tells us

she’s a pastor

and she initiates a scene

in a school

and I stand in back

and think

of boarding schools

and the Anishinaabe

ground

we are standing on

and the feminist in the improv class

is as white

as the blizzard outside

and the feminist in the improv class

is as middle class

as the blizzard outside

and the teacher tells us

to be safe

on the drive home

but there is war

everywhere

now

even in the

improv classes

and maybe that’s

good

and maybe that’s

horrible

and maybe it’s

both.

I get a hamburger with Alec and he tells me of doing psych

in the Marines

and how

after an “incident,”

they’d gather all the guys

who were involved

in the “incident”

and he makes quotes

in the air

with his fingers

and he leans into me

and the restaurant

is called Grey Ghost

and the waitress

hates us

and the waiter

hates us

because both keep coming

to us

and I want some ice

but I never get

my ice

but we get

the hamburgers

and they’re good

but the fries aren’t

and Alec tells me

that if they could talk to the guys

within 72 hours

of the “incident,”

then it would help them

and I asked

if they didn’t get to talk to the guys

within 72 hours

of the incident,

and he said that would happen,

because some guys

would have to go on a mission

or whatever

and they’d be gone

pulled into the next thing

and they’d develop PTSD

and we’re sitting

so that people

can walk behind us

and it makes me uncomfortable

and it makes Alec

uncomfortable,

but it’s good practice,

having all these people

walking behind us

when any of them

could slit our throats

or shiv our kidneys

or steals our guts

and the restaurant

is as loud

as one thousand

ghosts.

There’s a guy outside my apartment

lighting firecrackers

and it’s March

and it’s cold

and he’s lighting firecrackers

and throwing them

at people

who get out of their cars

and they’re not calling the cops

apparently

because the guy

throwing the firecrackers

has no shirt on

and it’s snowing

but softly,

the flakes

falling

horizontally

like this:

***

as if the earth

has been flipped

on its side

like the car I saw recently

on I-75

in Detroit

with its engine’s intestines

all

eviscerated

and the cars

all

going slow

to get a good look,

 

but the guy is lighting Roman candles

now

and aiming them

at the trees

with their soft snow

and he’s a neighbor

and he works for a company

and drives a white van

and he always works

but he’s drunk tonight

and getting back at the world

and the world

is letting him

and I am typing this

and I suddenly

shake

tremble

from the fear

at what he will do

next

before this night

is dead.

I’m talking with a friend who can’t afford heat

and I can afford heat

now

but I don’t have the heat on

because I got used to it

from all those years

where I couldn’t afford heat

in northern Alabama

and northern California

and I’m in southern Michigan now

so it’s hard to use heat

when I’m living in the south

and so I just heap the blankets on my bed,

excesses of blankets,

a mountain of blankets,

a pneumonia of blankets,

a GOAT of blankets,

a quadrillion fucking blankets

and I’m warm

and cold

and single

and the guy who can’t afford heat

asks if I’m ever going to have a family

and I say

I hope so

and he says,

How old are you?

and I want to tell the world to fuck off.

Me and my roommate used to put on Halloween masks in the dorms

and put on Ilyich Tchaikovsky

songs

if you can call them

songs

and you can’t

and we’d open our door

in our dorm

and we’d dance

with the music

melting

the day

with madness

and we were unpopular

with all those jocks

jocking

in the room

across from ours

and we didn’t care

because we did theater

when we weren’t in the theater program

and we’d get cast

anyway

with shit roles

with no lines

and we’d be in the background

and we’d steal the show

doing mime work

we weren’t supposed to do

and the director

would pull us aside

and ask us what the hell

we were doing

and we didn’t know

and my roommate

auditioned

for the play Rhinoceros

and during the audition

he went to the theater curtains

and started trying to yank them down,

wrapping his hands around them

and heaving his whole body down

but they wouldn’t budge

so he started kicking

and beating

the curtains

and while he was doing it

he was reciting

a monologue

from Hamlet,

the one where Hamlet

wants some French toast

or whatever the hell it was

and the board of directors

or whoever they were

just sat there

dumbfounded

and one of them

went and got security,

actually got security,

and they escorted my roommate out

of the theater

and he didn’t get the role,

but the actors found out about it

and loved him,

said that’s what theater is about,

that the role was all about angst

and madness

and alcoholic cum tornadoes

and I thought he was going to win a Tony

one day

but he got put in a psych ward

one day

and I went on

to get an MFA in theater

and all the great actors,

the ones that blew me away in that program

dropped out.

I swear to God.

All the brilliant fucking actors in that program

quit.

And all the average ones,

like me,

stayed.

One day

 

I’ll go

 

mad too

 

 

if I’m

 

lucky.

Ron Riekki’s books include Blood/Not Blood Then the Gates (Middle West Press), My Ancestors are Reindeer Herders and I Am Melting in Extinction (Loyola University Maryland’s Apprentice House Press), Posttraumatic (Hoot ‘n’ Waddle), and U.P. (Ghost Road Press).