When I walked into the room, they poured lava on my head and told me I was fired

but I couldn’t hear because of all the ash
in my ears and the room was packed full

of people I didn’t know—a librarian who
said I stole a book back in 1968, a penguin

who said I made half its family extinct,
and my boss who looked like a hole in

an animal—and they were lined up, all
with notebooks, all ready to slice me in

half, but I thanked them, because now
is the time where all can collapse, so

you have to be gracious and smile and
accept them shoving a mountain deep

into your guts, and I walked away after,
heading nowhere, ending up in a grave-

yard where someone mowed the lawn
like they had rivers of madness in their

lungs, just circling and spinning and
weaving that machine into sand and

puddle and fence and I just stood there,
jobless, watching this guy with a job,

tearing up the earth as if he wanted
to erase every single thing in sight.

I’d chop off my eyes for a kiss

that’s how lonely my eyes are,
my memories like rope, so god-

damn garden-level beautiful; I
should have died for her, but

instead I just wrote poems. My
God, I should have died and come

back to life. I should have done
everything. Everything.

The magician who lives below me comes home

and looks wrecked, destroyed by magic, this slow trudge, and
I’m a peeping tom, slits in the blinds, but so curious to see this

body, bedecked in motley, and so old and so young at the same
time, a man-boy who’s never smoked, never drank, but greyed,

youth-aged, starving for money, gambling for fame, but coming
home to this metal neighbourhood where crickets don’t even come,

just the soft sound of traffic in the distance, blending in with his
footsteps, so tender, like rabbits that have been forgotten in hats.

I went to Niagara Falls

I didn’t get it.
All that mist.
I got back in
my car and
drove one
thousand
miles, to
Kansas,
where my
ex- lives,
happily,
without
me. I
told her
about
Niagara.
She drank
coffee in
her kitchen
that was
the colour
of the Civil
War. I said
I didn’t get
how people
could go
down that
thing in
a barrel.
She told
me her
ex- would
be home
soon. They
still lived
together.
Nothing
in this
world
makes
sense.

Ron Riekki has been awarded a 2014 Michigan Notable Book, 2015 The Best Small Fictions, 2016 Shenandoah Fiction Prize, 2016 IPPY Award, 2020 Rhysling Anthology inclusion, 2019 Red Rock Film Fest Award, 2020 Dracula Film Festival Vladutz Trophy, 2019 Très Court International Film Festival Audience Award and Grand Prix, and 2022 Pushcart Prize.  Right now, Riekki’s listening to Nanci Griffith’s “I Wish It Would Rain.”