‘Cameras Steal Souls’ and other poems by Ron Riekki
By: Ron Riekki
Cameras Steal Souls
We photograph each other
until we smell.
There is a sledgehammer
ghost in the background.
She screams
for us to put away the cameras
and kill the photos
and smash the graphs
to replace them
with oaks and grass.
###
All the Guns are Satan’s Tongues
I ask the class
if Jesus
would own a gun
and a woman
in the front
row says, “Jesus wouldn’t
need a gun”
and a kid in
the back yells,
“And we don’t need Jesus.”
###
The Women Who Have Broken Up With Me Are Still in My Chest
I sink
in my skin;
the axes
of my exes
chop
deep
within
###
I Ask Her to Marry Me and She Says No
She tells me my eyes
look like lakes,
like frozen lakes
with a little boy
trapped
under the ice.
###
The Successful Writers Hold Their Life Preservers Tight
watching the drowning
drown,
we yell
out, Help! Help!
and they yell back,
“That doesn’t even rhyme.”
And another on the shore of the Visitor Writers Series
that has been renamed the Nepotic Writers Series
that has been renamed the Tenured-Who-Don’t-Even-Need-the-Money Writers Series
that has been renamed the Absolutely-No-Indigenous-Included Writers Series
yells, “Actually, it’s identical rhyme”
as Emily Dickinson’s corpse floats next to me.