“Abstracted Portrait” by Jane Cornish Smith, encaustic on canvas, 2014.

like homeless children in homes, tachycardic
from the insecurity of walls, the way the devil
digs into your pulse, proves that escape is not
history, that the heat of the hole of your head
supplies you with a constant need for intrusions,
the wish the helicopter on fire in your youth
could be drowned in rain, the melted flesh inside
melting away with your patriotism, your black-
and-white photographs of death vermonted
to the high-five days of transcendence when God
existed as heavy as hate and now after the waiting
room is gone, after the counselor’s shoes are in
the past, you almost see a dark bird of peace
approaching the holiday’s police siren lights

Ron Riekki wrote U.P.: a novel (Sewanee Writers Series and Great Michigan Read nominated) and edited The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works (2014 Michigan Notable Book from the Library of Michigan and finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award/Grand Prize shortlist, Midwest Book Award, Foreword Book of the Year, and Next Generation Indie Book Award), Here: Women Writing on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (2016 IPPY/Independent Publisher Book Award Gold Medal Great Lakes—Best Regional Fiction and Next Generation Indie Book Award—Short Story finalist), and And Here: 100 Years of Upper Peninsula Writing, 1917-2017 (Michigan State University Press, 2017).