by Ron Riekki
“a slight obscuration of the lower atmosphere, typically caused by fine suspended particles” —Oxford Languages
“Shortly after the police report was released to KTSM, NMSU chancellor Dan Arvizu announced the men’s basketball program had been shut down for the remainder of the 2022-23 season.” —KTSM, February 12, 2023
*
My ex- went to NMSU. I visited it and, there, she started singing a song by Everything But the Girl, but changing the lyrics, so that instead it was, her voice beautifully off-key: NMSU, like the deserts miss the rain! So that ‘And I miss you’ became the initials for her university, and she loved it there, she said. And I asked why and she said Because it was affordable. And I asked if there was anything else and she said, My friends were there. And I felt safe. And things change. Time flies. And in my mind, I go back in time so often. Some- times I think that’s what trauma is, this constant forcing of the mind back in time. When they hazed me in baseball—no, when Scott hazed me, when I just wanted to play baseball, came up behind me, pinned me to the ground, pressed into me, this future homecoming court member, the summer sun burning its light in my eyes, my arms Christed at my sides, and he’d spit, over and over, in my face, sucking it back into his mouth, no purpose except control, and his father was best friends with my father, the sickness of childhood, the dirt anxious below us, the tree branches trembling in the lack of wind, and when they hazed me in basketball—no, when Bud hazed me when I just wanted to play basketball, in a way similar to NMSU, in a way similar to Florida A&M, similar to Binghamton, the forced public nudity, then throwing me into a pool, and when I joined the military, it was like some infestation, how you don’t fear the quote- unquote enemy as much as you fear those around you, in your barracks, the blanket party done on a kid ten bunks down from mine, how they came in the night and I woke to the sound of fists in the darkness and it wasn’t me, but it would be, later, the “Crucifixions” they did at my duty stations, tying you to a fence, reminding me of Matthew Shepard, and they’d take rotten food they’d left in the jungle heat for days, pour it over your head, insects, the clock, your wrists, the vomit, and the repetition, so often, and so many who didn’t even fight, how they came for me, in the night, because I did not want to reenact hell, how they’d come up behind you, duct tape your mouth shut, your arms, to the chair, wheel you down the hall, clatter you outside, transfer you to fence, your body a map, time a skull, hate a latrine, and they killed one of us, during training, murdered, Lee, his name, Lee, Midwestern, like me, and the “violent physical hazing” at the University of Michigan is VCU’s death is University of Missouri’s student who’s blind now, can’t walk, can’t talk now, and the list of incidents, the copious amounts of alcohol, the unconscious-and- flown, the hit-his-head, and asphyxiation, the collapsed-lung, the polytrauma, and this is normative? and I see them, see their photos, of those killed, yearbook photos, where they glow, dressed in black, new glasses, smiles of hope, hair trimmed yesterdays, majors of Aviation, Engineering, Ecology, Middle East Studies, Social Work, and I’m teary looking at their photos, this sudden caesura, the blank page, knowing at least one university hazing death per year, from 1969 to now, with hundreds of deaths since 1838, with the most deaths at Sigma Alpha Epsilon at the University of Alabama. And this isn’t a poem. It’s a warning. And this isn’t a poem. It’s a war. And this isn’t a poem. It’s non- fiction. And this isn’t a poem. It’s hell. And I go to the college to complain about this and someone warns me, telling me not to do it, that I’m just wasting my time, and I do it anyway, and I’m in his office, and I explain to him how I’ve been harassed on this campus, and how I know others are being too, that it’s happening here, now, and he listens—no, he doesn’t listen, he hears me, sort of, and says, Look, I’m drowning with complaints. What do you want me to do about it? And I tell him that I want it to stop, that we need it to stop, and he looks at me and says, OK. How? And I tell him that that’s his job and he sighs and says, OK, thanks for stopping in and I ask him what he’s going to do and he starts escorting me to the door and I repeat it again and he says, You want me to be honest? And I say that I do. And he says, Nothing. And the door closes behind me.
*
Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice.
Searing, powerful. The violent face we wear, the unresolved, craven hunger for harm that fuels the epidemic of bullying and life taking plaguing us.