SHARMILA VOORAKKARA & RON RIEKKI
[All those years I threw away on ambulances,]
All those years I threw away on ambulances,
working on ambulances, driving ambulances
sleeping on the gurney waiting for calls
on ambulances, how I so rarely would
dream in an ambulance
I dreamed
standing up, while I watched my father die
on a cot in a hospital room, in a country where dying
was common and public, where I caught a fever, and my brain
burned and I dreamed I was a dream, and I curled up
in the belly of a skinny bitch dog in the street, a ball of heat
between her ribs
Sharmila Voorakkara received her MFA from the University of Virginia. Her first collection of poems, Fire Wheel, was published by the University of Akron Press.
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). Right now, he's listening to Erik Satie's "Gnossienne No. 6."