Super Bowl XVI and Also Last Week
Today I went on my roof and thought about my mother young
In Central Valley America with its rolling golden hills of wild Rye. Pushed back behind I5 and the airport. Or under a water tower kissed soft or held like a child. Screamed a loud “so what” at 18-wheelers with methmen behind the wheel. Shotgunned in your father’s car in October dry heat.
I’ve grown to be jealous of her.
In all my hairpin turns there wasn’t a single volta.
The day after I thought about second chances and chances and chances again; Her dying and healing and dying again
And my many wasted days
In ER lobbies waving flags white in truce or Morphine IV slow dripping soft clear jelly so hard in your vein; how IF I had it MY WAY, I might plug myself in with you and coast down the hallway on wheels. Lights above us passing like the trucks out on I5.
Once again the week slides through me without a change of heart. I grasp for a handle with hands that slip. Poor habits rotate in my record hall and I let memories be the center that I spin around.
And there she is just the same
Thai Boxing
Thunder cracked hard over That Phanom.
A 13 year old boxer died of a brain hemorrhage two days after being knocked out His 175th bout
Lying spiritless under dim halogen
in gaudy shorts, moist on the taught canvas
Years before,
they cut the nerves on his shins
Disposed of the useless cordage
in some corner office in That Phanom
The only photos I find of Anucha Tasako online
are those of his funeral
His school photo adorned with spring flowers
Tendrils finding their way into the space
below the knees
Occasionally I find him premortem,
Statued
With fists held high beside preteen eyes
wrapped tight with medical tape
Fresno
There's a brown tint burned into the lawn in the
backyard where strips of green find the strength to
push through the soil.
Ceramic angels crowd the edges, gazes downcast; I
wonder if their two dollar divinity is what guides the
healthy grass to the surface.
My sister was engaged to be married yesterday and
my moms in the kitchen and my grandmother is in the
bedroom with my vegetable uncle.
I sit in the living room and watch the game in the
same chair where my grandfather used to shoot up
insulin.
We have dinner with foamy microwave membrane on
the mashed potatoes and say a prayer before we start.
Hand in ugly hand
No One Can Run Downhill Fast As a Thoroughbred
Maria is on the floor of the shower silvering in the waters shiny grasp
And the liquid runs through her hair
Permeable in its million pieces
At the end it surrenders
Expanding and sliding down the drain
Her words run laps or miles
(whichever comes first)
Yet she doesnt say a thing
Outside there are Georgia Pines
And a soft hum of the Cicadas
In their familial groan
but there wasn't much to hear under
the waterfall
Other than the deaf pound from above
When I wrote to her some months ago
I told her how it got hot again but dark fast
I told her about how I would stay up
thinking about the holding patterns over LAX
How they maybe spelled something out or made a shape an outline even of someone we mutually knew
How the little circles showed faces of second lives beginning
Ryan Riffenburgh is a writer and musician from Ventura, California. He is one of the primary songwriters of the band Outwest and is currently pursuing a BA in poetry from UCLA.
Photographs by Dylan Meyer
High Horse 