Dear Sir/Madam

Ron Riekki & Sharmila Voorakkara

Dear Sir/Madam:

I’d like to request two weeks off so I can get absolutely shitfaced, so I can forget
the fact that this is my life. I would also like an extra three weeks off to get piss-
footed, I mean not only drinking the beer but also eating the entire keg. As well
as another four weeks off to get vomit-spleened, where I will forget every single
obligation I have to my molecules and this pea-brained thesis that keeps us all in
chains. Finally, I’d like another five decades off to have my memory cleanwiped
so that I won’t be a chronic adrenaline mess for eternity but thank you for all the
pennies and nickels you shoved down my throat.

I pray God kills your hope too.

Sinisterly,

The Person Whose Last Name You Manslaughtered in Both Spelling and Pronunciation

Ron Riekki’s books include Blood/Not Blood Then the Gates (Middle West Press, poetry), My Ancestors are Reindeer Herders and I Am Melting in Extinction (Loyola University Maryland’s Apprentice House Press, hybrid), Posttraumatic (Hoot ‘n’ Waddle, nonfiction), and U.P. (Ghost Road Press, fiction). Right now, Riekki’s listening to Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ “The Ship Song.”

Sharmila Voorakkara received her MFA from the University of Virginia. Her first collection of poems, Fire Wheel, was published by the University of Akron Press.