Poetry Drawer: Between Jobs & Not Me by Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois

Between Jobs

I don’t have long in this world
My wife will keep me going for a while
and I’ll keep her
But then it will be as she suspected
and as I suspect
Again I’m drunk in the afternoon
on red wine
She’s at work
I look out the back window
The forest rises like a mountain
The mountains rise like the white-capped waves
coastal travelers see

Not Me

I made you pregnant
Early the next morning you suffered nightmares
Hideous Parisians were coming after you
men with shaggy wolf heads
Huge black men cut the air with glinting sickles
I took a meal in an elegant restaurant
I thought of everything in the world with equanimity
A golden waffle with very small holes
was served on a china plate
Coffee was served in a gilt-edged cup
I made you pregnant
Early the next morning you twisted in bed
suffering nightmares
We were at my parents’ home
When I got up to piss
my mother trapped me in an alcove
and persuaded me not to marry you

Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over fourteen-hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He has been nominated for numerous prizes, and was awarded the 2017 Booranga Writers’ Centre (Australia) Prize for Fiction. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, is based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and Nook, or as a print edition. He lives in Denver, Colorado, USA.