Ron Riekki
Ron Riekki has been awarded a 2014 Michigan Notable Book, 2015 The Best Small Fictions, 2016 Shenandoah Fiction Prize, 2016 IPPY Award, 2019 Red Rock Film Fest Award, 2019 Best of the Net finalist, 2019 Très Court International Film Festival Audience Award and Grand Prix, 2020 Dracula Film Festival Vladutz Trophy, 2020 Rhysling Anthology inclusion, and 2022 Pushcart Prize. Right now, Riekki’s listening to Chet Baker’s “It Never Entered My Mind.”
“I don’t want to remember”
—Amelia Rosselli,
“[There’s Something like Pain in the Room]”
I drive home after work
and I work
in trauma,
although that
sounds strange,
as if the work
is trauma, as if
I’m drowning
in trauma, when
I love to help
and help to love,
or try to,
if that makes sense,
if anything does,
and the drive is long,
the sky dusted
with nighttime,
and my mind
strays, mindless,
the car self-driving,
because we all live
in the future
now, and I’m part-
time, but all jobs
are full-time,
feel as if all you do
is work
to afford
to pay for the gas
that gets you
to work,
and my mind
goes to loss,
funerals of loss,
graveyards of loss,
memories of loss,
the thick absence
of the passenger seat
where someone I loved
is a hurricane away,
no, two, or, no, three,
how loss tears
everything to shreds
and leaves you in a fog,
and, God, I
SCREAM!
before I know I’m doing it,
and then the silence,
a sky-blue silence,
and I drive,
calm down,
and drive,
and the trees are so
beautiful
with their hints
of newborn
moonlight.
