Poetry By Ron Riekki

        Tzef Pine CC



My uncle quit heroin

for methadone
and he was doing better,
even though he got lung cancer,
but he was doing better,
and he’d call my mother
every day and they
would talk about football
and my mother hated football
but started to learn
to make him happy
and now she watches the Chiefs
even though we’re not from Kansas City
but she wants to remember him
since he died, falling down
at the nursing home after only
one week of living there
and so the Chiefs are on
in the other room
and I’m applying for jobs,
embarrassed at my life,
listening to her TV
through the wall,
and the neighbor
is going off
with his saw again
even though it’s nighttime
and maybe something good will happen.
We’ll see.

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Ron Riekki’s books include U.P. (Ghost Road Press), Posttraumatic (Hoot ‘n’ Waddle), and My Ancestors are Reindeer Herders and I Am Melting in Extinction (Loyola University Maryland’s Apprentice House Press).  Right now, Riekki's listening to Nat "King" Cole's "Penthouse Serenade."
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