An old man with Alzheimers
bit by a rattler in his front yard
Freckled kid swinging on an old tire
Rope gives way and he falls
breaks his leg
I watch both events from my kitchen window
I go to the Arches
and stand under a rock arch
worth millions of tons of rock
and think: Is this the day
this arch gives way?
It never has
but on one day
I saw an old man snake-bit
and a swing give way, kid break his leg
And I saw bees burn with false sweetness
and I saw my fat, slovenly sister stand in front of the cemetery
and eat a gallon of Rocky Road ice cream
out of the container
all by herself
by Mitchell Krochmalnik Grabois
Mitchell Krochmalnik Grabois was born in the Bronx and now splits his time between Denver and a one-hundred-and-twenty-year-old, one room schoolhouse in Riverton Township, Michigan. His short fiction and poetry appears in close to two hundred literary magazines, most recently The T.J. Eckleberg Review, Memoir Journal, Out of Our and The Blue Hour. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, most recently for his story “Purple Heart” published in The Examined Life in 2012. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, published by Xavier Vargas E-ditions, is available for all e-readers for 99 cents through Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Smashwords. A print edition is also available through Amazon.
