the prison

near where I grew up
keeps getting bigger
just like the casino
near where I grew up
how it just explodes
in size, how it’s bigger
than my hometown now,
how a neighbor lost his house
to the casino and ended up
in prison and how the casino
eats houses and how the prison
eats people and how hungry
the hospital is, nearby,
where I work, how the hospital
eats houses and people
and how it grows
and grows and grows
and grows and will never
go away

shift

a man with nothing
he cannot move
he stares at the ceiling
I ask the head nurse if I can buy him a radio
she doesn’t respond
I could buy him a radio
she says nothing
the patient says nothing
she walks out
I walk out
the rooms are filled with nothing
just people
who mean something
everything
a man lifting a five-pound weight with his right arm
he can’t use his left arm
I watch him lift the weight
he doesn’t know I’m at the door
we have the same last name
almost the same first name
we’re not related
he got in a motorcycle accident
which caused a stroke
or maybe it was because of his stroke
who knows?
the chicken, the egg
there are empty beds
how the living die so quickly
so slowly
how suddenly a patient has his own room
a moment
where the room is all his
and then he dies
and the room is empty
and then full
a couple days later
and we have bodies
the staff
us
we’re like an infection
how we won’t go away
keep taking their temperatures
keep taking their vitals
taking their blood pressure
taking
taking
taking
taking a break
when the shift is over
too busy to take an actual break
during the shift
the shift
the change
the photos the patients have—
five years ago
three
two
how they were walking then
talking then
how quickly things change
how a virus comes in
how one person has it
then two
three
then five
then half the entire home
the division line
the nursing office
a hallway
how the virus didn’t go down the hallway
chose one side
how the virus liked one side
how the stroke liked one side
after
I go home
I’m exhausted
I wonder if it’s virus-exhausted
or work-exhausted
I sit in bed
thinking
Am I sick?
I look up at the ceiling

(he walks away) there’s nothing unhealthier than working in health care

working in medical, I have no medical insurance

we eat fast
Heimlich-fast

and in the prison, I’d treat stabbing
after stabbing
after stabbing
and many of the stabbings
were men
who stabbed themselves
to try to go to the hospital
but we’d treat them
there
in the prison
Aren’t you going to send me to the hospital?
there’s televisions at the hospital
nurses
the outside
we keep them there
they hate me
they tell me they’re going to kill me
when I save their life
tell me they don’t want their lives saved
tell me they don’t want their lives

and then I work at a construction site
where the health and safety manager tells me he thinks coronavirus is a hoax

and when I’m doing COVID screening
one of the employees
a guy named Juan
points to the hand sanitizer on my desk,
says, They were eating that
Who?
Refugees
Where?
El Salvador
Why?
Starvation
You can’t eat hand sanitizer, I say, it’ll kill you
It did

Ron Riekki’s books include I have been warned not to write about this (Main Street Rag), Niiji (Cyberwit, co-written with Sally Brunk), My Ancestors are Reindeer Herders and I Am Melting in Extinction (Apprentice House Press), Post-traumatic (Hoot ‘n’ Waddle), and U.P. (Ghost Road Press). Riekki co-edited Undocumented (Michigan State University Press) and The Many Lives of The Evil Dead (McFarland), and edited The Many Lives of It (McFarland), And Here (MSU Press), Here (MSU Press, Independent Publisher Book Award), and The Way North (Wayne State University Press, Michigan Notable Book).