“idiopathic” (my life has been the medieval military exercise of tilting at a quintain)
by Ron Riekki
January 2022
I shake. I constantly shake. My feet shake
and hands shake even when I’m not doing
a handshake and my teeth shake and jaw
shakes and my fingers shake when I’m
holding a milkshake and when I’m not
holding a milkshake and when my girl-
friend Huilin holds me I ask her if she
feels me shaking and she says no, but
I feel my feelings shake and my thoughts
shake and my stillness shake and I grew
up in a mining town where they’d set off
dynamite every noon and the room would
shake and the ceiling had cracks and near-
by the railroad would have railroad cars
go by and the roof would shake and during
the war our lives shook the trees shook
the night shook the dozen people killed
at the bases I was on are in graves now
so still in their graves now so still and
this poem here is so still and if you let
in my memories you will shake so stop
reading this poem and move on to another
page before the trembling transfers from
the leaves outside of your home in
the coming winter night to your body.
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). His poetry appears in Rattle, Poetry Northwest; fiction in Threepenny Review, Bellevue Literary Review; and nonfiction in River Teeth, New Orleans Review, and more. He has edited eight books, including Here and The Way North.