Photography © Edward S. Gault

 

The poet Donald Hall told me

he wasn’t writing poetry anymore.
Only prose. He told me poetry was

too hard to write now, but prose
he could. He said it took less energy

to write prose. He said poems were
like lifting weights for the Olympics,

that one sonnet weighed about six
hundred pounds. A villanelle was

a ton. A sestina would give you
a hernia. An epic poem would take

your firstborn child. I asked him
about haiku. He said a haiku will

trick you. You’ll think it’s going
perfectly fine, and then you’ll pop

a charley horse, spasms that’ll have
you begging for mercy. He said

he was sticking to nonfiction.
With fiction, you had to invent

things, but with nonfiction, you
just say what happened. He said

you don’t even have to think. I
asked him if thinking hurt. He

said at his age everything hurts.
I’m nearing his age when he told

me all that. I think this poem I’m
writing right now just might kill me.

 

Ron Riekki’s books include Blood/Not Blood Then the Gates (Middle West Press), 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, Riekki’s listening to David Arnold and Nicholas Dodd’s “Blunt Instrument” from the Casino Royal film score.

Edward S. Gault is a poet and fine arts photographer living in Brighton, Massachusetts. His work has appeared in Oddball Magazine, Spectrum, Wilderness House Literary Review, Interlude, Currents, and Encore.