the poem where I am lit on fire and hauled up high in the air for all of Negaunee to see
By Ron Riekki
October 15, 2022
October 15, 2022
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“And art made tongue-tied by authority,”
--William Shakespeare, Sonnet 66 my hometown has no dunes
no mountains no snakes just the flat snow of endurance the cousin’s absolute total commitment to drink himself to death and the nursing staff telling us that he can do anything he wants because this is America and the words are so weird like the endless holes near the mine where we would lean over look down see the bottom’s nighttime even midday when the dynamite would explode and the cracks in our ceiling would lengthen and the liquor in our fingers and the deafness like snails and the ore that would own the rivers and the railroad tracks where we would walk forever until we reached Lake Superior and then we turned around and walked back |
Ron Riekki’s books include 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). Riekki has edited eight books, including Here (Michigan State University Press, Independent Publisher Book Award), and The Way North (Wayne State University Press, Michigan Notable Book). Right now, Riekki’s listening to Simon & Garfunkel's concert in Central Park.