Ron Riekki

THE PROSTITUTE GETS A PROSTITUTE

It happens. The dentist has to go to a dentist.
The lawyer needs a lawyer. The chef wants
some food he didn't have to slave over.
So the whore decides she wants a whore.

But the male prostitutes are all Deepwater
Horizon oil spills. They are all Tangshan
earthquakes. Half a million death toll.
She decides to clean herself up. She checks

into rehab. But the rehab employees are all
in rehab, the place empty. Her voice echoes
off the walls, kissing the future. The future
decides it wants the future. It goes further

towards its end, exponential speed, quickness
in its collapse. God finds himself in a park,
the beauty of creation, but this strange feeling
that He too should have someone to pray to.

Ron Riekki's books include U.P.: a novel and The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works.