“a slight obscuration of the lower atmosphere, typically caused by fine suspended particles”
—Oxford Languages
“Shortly after the police report was released to KTSM, NMSU chancellor Dan Arvizu announced the men’s basketball program had been shut down for the remainder of the 2022-23 season.”
—KTSM, February 12, 2023
My ex- went to NMSU. I visited it and,
there, she started singing a song by
Everything But the Girl, but changing
the lyrics, so that instead it was, her
voice beautifully off-key: NMSU,
like the deserts miss the rain! So that
‘And I miss you’ became the initials
for her university, and she loved it there,
she said. And I asked why and she said
Because it was affordable. And I asked
if there was anything else and she said,
My friends were there. And I felt safe.
And things change. Time flies. And in
my mind, I go back in time so often. Some-
times I think that’s what trauma is, this
constant forcing of the mind back in time.
When they hazed me in baseball—no,
when Scott hazed me, when I just wanted
to play baseball, came up behind me,
pinned me to the ground, pressed into me,
this future homecoming court member,
the summer sun burning its light in my
eyes, my arms Christed at my sides,
and he’d spit, over and over, in my face,
sucking it back into his mouth, no purpose
except control, and his father was best friends
with my father, the sickness of childhood,
the dirt anxious below us, the tree branches
trembling in the lack of wind, and when
they hazed me in basketball—no, when
Bud hazed me when I just wanted to play
basketball, in a way similar to NMSU,
in a way similar to Florida A&M, similar
to Binghamton, the forced public nudity,
then throwing me into a pool, and when
I joined the military, it was like some
infestation, how you don’t fear the quote-
unquote enemy as much as you fear those
around you, in your barracks, the blanket
party done on a kid ten bunks down from
mine, how they came in the night and I
woke to the sound of fists in the darkness
and it wasn’t me, but it would be, later,
the “Crucifixions” they did at my duty
stations, tying you to a fence, reminding
me of Matthew Shepard, and they’d take
rotten food they’d left in the jungle heat
for days, pour it over your head, insects,
the clock, your wrists, the vomit, and
the repetition, so often, and so many
who didn’t even fight, how they came for
me, in the night, because I did not want to
reenact hell, how they’d come up behind
you, duct tape your mouth shut, your
arms, to the chair, wheel you down
the hall, clatter you outside, transfer
you to fence, your body a map, time
a skull, hate a latrine, and they killed
one of us, during training, murdered,
Lee, his name, Lee, Midwestern, like
me, and the “violent physical hazing”
at the University of Michigan is VCU’s
death is University of Missouri’s student
who’s blind now, can’t walk, can’t talk
now, and the list of incidents, the copious
amounts of alcohol, the unconscious-and-
flown, the hit-his-head, and asphyxiation,
the collapsed-lung, the polytrauma, and
this is normative? and I see them, see
their photos, of those killed, yearbook
photos, where they glow, dressed in black,
new glasses, smiles of hope, hair trimmed
yesterdays, majors of Aviation, Engineering,
Ecology, Middle East Studies, Social Work,
and I’m teary looking at their photos, this
sudden caesura, the blank page, knowing
at least one university hazing death per
year, from 1969 to now, with hundreds
of deaths since 1838, with the most deaths
at Sigma Alpha Epsilon at the University
of Alabama. And this isn’t a poem. It’s
a warning. And this isn’t a poem. It’s
a war. And this isn’t a poem. It’s non-
fiction. And this isn’t a poem. It’s hell.
And I go to the college to complain about
this and someone warns me, telling me
not to do it, that I’m just wasting my time,
and I do it anyway, and I’m in his office,
and I explain to him how I’ve been
harassed on this campus, and how I know
others are being too, that it’s happening
here, now, and he listens—no, he doesn’t
listen, he hears me, sort of, and says,
Look, I’m drowning with complaints.
What do you want me to do about it?
And I tell him that I want it to stop,
that we need it to stop, and he looks
at me and says, OK. How? And I
tell him that that’s his job and he sighs
and says, OK, thanks for stopping in
and I ask him what he’s going to do
and he starts escorting me to the door
and I repeat it again and he says,
You want me to be honest? And I say
that I do. And he says, Nothing.
And the door closes behind me.
Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice.