in the ambulance.

His body

was torn to bits.

He looked like

an old sewing machine

that’d been thrown

into an alley.

We got to his house.

It was a mansion.

The house was swallowing

a hill

and winning.

The hill didn’t stand

a chance.

We put him

inside.

There was a maid there.

She signed his paperwork.

We went to leave.

He asked us to stay.

We said we had another call.

We didn’t have another call,

but we said that.

He said to please stay.

The maid was beautiful.

We said he had the maid.

He said he wanted someone

to talk to.

He said that she doesn’t talk to him,

that she’s too beautiful to talk to him.

I wondered if that meant he thought

we were ugly.

We were.

He was right.

-------------------------------------

Ron Riekki’s books include Blood/Not Blood Then the Gates (Middle West Press, poetry), My Ancestors are Reindeer Herders and I Am Melting in Extinction (Loyola University Maryland’s Apprentice House Press, hybrid), Posttraumatic (Hoot ‘n’ Waddle, nonfiction), and U.P. (Ghost Road Press, fiction).  Right now, Riekki’s listening to K's Choice's "Not an Addict."