RON RIEKKI
I’M SICK OF WRITING PRISON POEMS
From now on I’m writing poems about the moon,
but the problem is it’s a prison moon, a moon seen
through barbed wire that reflects the moonlight
so that it blinds you into pieces, this moon, when
you just want to enjoy the goddamn moon &
I suppose I should enjoy a prison moon, even thank it,
especially when I wasn’t a prisoner, but a man
paid twice what I probably would have gotten
out in the civilian world with its safe moonlight,
a moonlight where you don’t have worry in
your arteries, where footsteps echoing on
your ears don’t make you become a thin ghost.
IN DETROIT, WAITING IN LINE
the guy in front of me pulled up his pant leg
to show a bullet hole, the soft snow of his skin,
and the guy in front of him turned around
and pulled his shirt up, showing his own bullet
hole and a guy in back of me said, You showing
bullet holes? and he walked up to show us
his arm, an orchard of scars where you could
almost hear them about to bloom.
Ron Riekki’s books include And Here: 100 Years of Upper Peninsula Writing, 1917-2017 (Michigan State University Press), Here: Women Writing on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (2016 Independent Publisher Book Award Gold Medal Great Lakes Best Regional Fiction), The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works (2014 Michigan Notable Book awarded by the Library of Michigan), and U.P.: a novel (Ghost Road Press). He has books upcoming with Apprentice House Press, Hoot ‘n’ Waddle, Main Street Rag, McFarland, Michigan State University Press, and Wayne State University Press.