wildscape. literary journal

In winter, I walk barefoot through the snow to the Huron River
by Ron Riekki

and get in, slowly, cautiously, because I cannot feel
my feet, but I feel everything else inside: the PTSD,
the military, the inability to get therapy through the V.A,

the ability to get therapy through the V.A. but the inability
to get good therapy through the V.A., the kids yelling
that I’m a something-something for supporting the war

and I don’t support the war but I have a sweatshirt
from a program for vets with trauma history and apparently
that means I support the war when I suppose you could

think that but the reality I know is the majority of vets
don’t support war but their curses curse me and the night
falls quickly and their truck pulls back up to me and I’m

walking slowly because of my knee and they yell again
but this time I hear clearly and the things they are calling
me are things found in brothels and E.R.s and I’m a thing

found on floors and in garbage cans if they are accurate
of who I am, and there’s an inability, and the reality
is that veterans get on average seven more years of

prison than do civilians and the reality is that veterans
with disabilities are fifteen times more likely to be
killed by the police and twenty-five percent of veterans

come out disabled and twenty-five percent of those
veterans are severely disabled and twenty-two veterans
per day commit suicide, and Am I allowed to write this

in a poem? or am I supposed to be quiet like the dead
in the cemetery next to the V.A. where there’s a sign
saying that I can be buried there in the future for free.

about the author // Ron Riekki

Ron Riekki received a Pushcart Prize in 2022.  Right now, he’s listening to At the Drive-In’s “One Armed Scissor,” although that just ended so now Radiohead’s “Let Down (Remastered)” is playing.  Riekki is the most single human on the face of the Earth.

Twitter/X: @RiekkiRon