By: Ron Riekki

1

            The Poet Laureate pulls me aside and tells me that the next Poet Laureate to be elected to his position is going to be white and it’s going to be a friend of his and there is nothing

I can do about it.  And I think of patriarchy
and I think of racism and I think of power
and I think of how I helped him to get into
that position and how there were questions
about the voting and how there was a Native-
American author who was neck-and-neck
with him, and there were worries about
ballot-stuffing on his part, that he set it up
so he’d get the same people voting over and
over and over and over for him and yet there
was this Native author who was running
authentically and she was quiet and humble,
and lost, because we couldn’t prove what
seemed so obvious, and now, looking back,
we could have proved it, but it was over
so quickly and it was ugly so quickly and
another poet told me, Never create Poet
Laureate positions.  It just turns art into
politics.  And the Poet Laureate walks
away from me and he writes poems
where he pretends to be a Christian
and I think of the Christians who
owned slaves and I think of struggle
and I think of derailment and I think
of muting and I think of absence and
I think of power and I think of sorrow.

2

The head of the department in Social Work pulls me aside and tells me that if I don’t stop speaking about indigenous issues in class, he will make it so that I lose my scholarship

and the shock is that this is a program in social work, yes,
social work, and I realize that it’s everywhere, oppression,
that it’s maybe even heaviest in the places where you think
it would be the lightest and I ask in what class, because I’d
been talking about Native issues in more than one class and
he says, It doesn’t matter.  Just stop intimidating the teacher.
But which teacher?  And what intimidation?  Is speaking out
about indigenous issues intimidating?  He says, It’s not part
of the class.  These are not indigenous classes.  And I tell him,
“Aren’t all the classes indigenous classes?”  And I tell him,
“Aren’t all the classes being held on indigenous land?”  And
he tells me that I can either listen to what he’s telling me or
there can be an investigation.  “Of what?”  And he tells me,
Complaints against you.  “Complaints for what?”  And he
tells me that the instructors have spent a lot of time on their
syllabi and that they don’t have time for misdirections over
and over when they’re heading the class in the direction that
they want it to go.  And I’m wondering if the direction they
want it to go is one of complete and total indigenous absence,
because I’ve had no indigenous teachers in this social work
program and the indigenous students have been silent, because
the culture teaches them to kill the light inside and the culture
teaches them to realize the attorneys are everywhere and
the culture teaches us to submit our bodies when I insist I will
instead submit poems where I write what I am told not to.

3

            My section leader in paramedic school pulls me aside after he finds out that I reported the instructor for making homophobic comments

and he tells me that being a medic is a dangerous job
and, that even in paramedic school, it can be dangerous,
and we’re in the back room that he pulled me into to ‘talk’
and we’re talking and there are all these mannequin
corpses laid out around us with chopped off arms and
open mouths that look like they have only witnessed fear
in their eternity and melted-closed eyes that are haunted
with not-learning and this section leader cut himself when we
were practicing IV lines on vinyl-latex-steel-metal cadavers
heaped around us, carelessly, and he tells me I could get hurt
just like anybody could get hurt, and I ask why he’s saying this
and he tells me to just keep my mouth shut and be a good
student and that we’ll get through this program easily and
I look at one of the mannequins staring at us with its absent eyes
and moaning mouth and I ask what I would need to be quiet about
and he says that all the instructors know all of the other instructors
and that if you upset one instructor you’re upsetting all of
the instructors and I ask how I upset an instructor and he says
that medics curse and that medics have gallows humor and that
a lot of medics are vets and that we can say anything we want
and I tell him, then, good, then I can say anything I want and if
I want to state that I have a problem with homophobic jokes
and homophobic nicknames and homophobic anecdotes that I can,
then, speak out and say anything I want and he asks me if I’ve ever
seen Full Metal Jacket and I have and he asks me if I’m a vet
and I am and he says he is too and he says that you don’t want to be
lying down on your mattress with your eyes closed when you’re
pissing off the world and I ask if he’s saying they’re going to do
something to me and he says he doesn’t know what anyone is
doing to anyone, but that it’s kind of him to come “warn me”
and I ask if I’m being “warned” and he says he has to go
and I tell him that villains in movies don’t realize they’re villains
and he says, “I’ve always loved the villains, if you want me to be
perfectly honest with you” and he turns to leave and I can smell
plastic and foam and silicone and deceit and polyurethane and hate
and I look around at the dead that we practice on and I realize
that it’s not just the police we have to worry about, but it’s anyone
in a uniform.  I hear his footsteps walking away, then thick silence.