When I Tell the PA That I’m Shaking, Constantly Shaking, He Says,

“Show me.” He says it like he is sick of me
already. He just met me, already sick of me.
The VA is full. The VA’s stomach is full
of people. So many are homeless. They see me
as homeless. They hate the homeless. You sense

this the moment you step into the VA. You’re met
with a security guard with a thick gun on his hip,
his tumorish gun, Chondrosarcoma-Glock.
There are so many vets coming here for PTSD
counseling and the number one thing they don’t

want to be greeted with at the door is a gun,
but there it is, and there’s the president staring

at you in his monstrous photo, and there’s
the front-desk clerk who always looks like he

hates vets, always, always. And I tell the doc

that I’m shaking and he says, “Show me.” He’s sick

of me too, tells me that he would never be
stupid enough to join the military. This is the VA.

I’m shaking, I tell the nurse. It’s in your head,
they tell me. Psychogenic, they tell me. Nothing,

they tell me. Nothing they can do about it, they
tell me. They mispronounce my name when
they call it out in the waiting room. They
mispronounce my name over the phone. They
mispronounce my name after I tell them the correct

way to say my name. They take an X-ray, by mistake,
after they have already taken the same X-ray, telling me
they apologize for the mistake. I think about radiation
immediately after radiation. I think about mispronunciation
after mispronunciation. I go home. I lie in bed, trembling.

Ron Riekki’s books include My Ancestors are Reindeer Herders and I Am Melting in Extinction (Loyola University Maryland’s Apprentice House Press), Posttraumatic (Hoot ‘n’ Waddle), and U.P. (Ghost Road Press). Riekki has edited eight books, including Here (Michigan State University Press, Independent Publisher Book Award) and The Way North (Wayne State University Press, Michigan Notable Book). Right now, Riekki’s listening to A Tribe Called Red/The Halluci Nation featuring Northern Voice’s “Sisters.”