Ron Riekki
The waiting room at the VA is a room where we wait and we wait and we
“I am to wait, though waiting so be hell,”
—William Shakespeare, sonnet LVIII
wait and we wait and we
are bearded and hatted and
homeless and divorced and
we pray and we wait and we
talk and we wait and we put
our fingers in our ears for
some silence but it doesn’t
work because the waiting
room in the V.A. is filled
with echoes of coughs and
echoes of coughs and echoes
and I can hear the man next
to me breathing and another
stares straight into the walls
of burning and another yells
every few minutes at no one
at someone at none and is
quiet and quite a while we
wait and for a damn year we
wait and we age and wait
and the room is ugly and
the room is simple and
the room is waiting too
I suppose and we were
once children but now
we are ugly and aged
and old and minimum-
waged and told to wait
longer and we long for
the days when we won’t
wait and when we won’t
want to stop waiting but
will be where we need
to be and where we need
to be is not here but we’re
here in this white room
with white walls that look
like they have been shot
and been killed with silence
and we drink the warm
water in the isolated sink
and we sink and we’re wind
and we statue and we die
in slow motion and we
have our names yelled
from the other side of
the room with the worst
pronunciations in the world
as if our last names are
curses as if our last names
are disasters as if our last
names are funerals and
we wait for our last names
or some version of our last
names where we cringe at
who we are and who we are
is men with bodies like cities
in cities that shriek with
sirens and our depressions
are historic and our anxiety
is nonessential and our bones
have rotted and to stand is
a knife wound and to walk
is an arrest and our mortality
is crumbled and this room
is a continent and this room
is a war in itself and this
room is the opposite of art
and this room is around
our necks and this room
is missing everything and
this room is in our chests
and this room is infinity
and I always sit in this
chair and if someone is
in this chair I stand but
no one ever seems to be
in this chair as if this chair
was meant to own my body
and drown my body and
disown my body and down
the hall I hear coughing
and I see missing fingers
and I see missing legs
and I see missing sight
and I hear missing speech
and this room is a cage
and this room is a covet
and this room uncures
and this room holds
the guilt of survivors
and this room chokes
us and we wait and we
are good and we wait
and die and we wait
and live and we wait
and Charon and we
wait and Styx and
we wait and Cerberus
and we wait and virus
and we wait and we
death and we wait and
we live and we sit
with kyphosis and
we shit ourselves
and we stink and
we’re hated and
we served and
we’re hated and
we’re here and
we’re hated and
I drive home and
someone sees my
vet license plate
and yells some-
thing vulgar at me
and I remember
when a gun—
excuse me, I mean
when a guy who
was in the waiting
room just slumped
out of his chair
and died right
there a heart
attack and how
they couldn’t
revive him and
he died in this
waiting room
with his face
pressed into
the floor with
a thousand feet
having stepped
there and I stared
at them pressing
on the chest and
this light coming
through a window
that wasn’t there
but that I imagined
and the dust lit up
sparkling like it
was a church
in my mind
and how this
man was a saint
in my mind
and how this
room was a lit
wayside chapel
and all of us
are Christs.
“I don’t remember writing this poem. I know I wrote it, but my memory is starting to go, so when Collateral accepted the poem it was exciting for me to read it. Like seeing a movie for the first time. Then realizing that you had actually seen it before. I just know that, reading the poem, at the end, I said out loud, ‘That’s brutal.’ I’m not sure what other people’s responses will be. I was also surprised at the length. I typically don’t write that long of poems, but it felt like it needed it, like there was a lot to say.” —Ron Riekki
Ron Riekki has been awarded a Michigan Notable Book, The Best Small Fictions, Shenandoah Fiction Prize, IPPY Award, Red Rock Film Fest Award, Best of the Net finalist, Très Court International Film Festival Audience Award and Grand Prix, Dracula Film Festival Vladutz Trophy, Rhysling Anthology inclusion, and 2022 Pushcart Prize. Riekki co-edited The Many Lives of The Purge, which is a nominee for The Eiffel Award: The Year’s Best Books on Film. Right now, Riekki’s listening to The National’s “Bloodbuzz Ohio”.
