Nyad
Diana Nyad
exhausted
drops her mask,
custom made to protect her from
jellyfish stings,
onto the sand
Jellies are vicious in the waters between
Cuba and Key West
Key West and Cuba
and they have bedeviled her
her entire life
but now, at 64
she has accomplished her dream
I squat to recover the mask
People’s bodies press around me
Adulation all around
Before I rise
I press the mask to my face
and feel for a moment
what it is like to be Nyad
salt-burned, swollen
weary
triumphant
alone
Guard
It was not immediately clear
how W was able to hang himself
He was on suicide watch
The guard must have had to answer the
call of nature
and maybe he was constipated
He took too long
Maybe he had a magazine in there
a girlie magazine
Maybe it was a newspaper and he
was fascinated by a story
about the events unfolding in Syria
and in the United States
his strong feeling that
World War Three is creeping up on us
and there’s nothing we can do about it
Maybe he had a philosophical moment
in which he recalled his favorite scenes
from Dostoyevsky’s novels
especially Crime and Punishment
We don’t really know how
W got the opportunity
to kill himself
but now he’s gone
The guard feels guilty
feels terrible about it
but he won’t feel that way
for long
Reading Frankenstein
Louise blisses out in Paris
and in return
the universe awards her
a swollen neck gland
She’s reading Frankenstein
and the monster’s neck is swollen too
She was always an impressionable adolescent
She went to a summer creative writing class
and met the famous science-fiction writer H D
H D invited all the students to come up to his mansion
on Mulholland
and when everyone else left
Louise stayed behind
They sat on a couch and she adored him as he told her
how he had written the famous books
that became the famous monster movies
He asked his black house servant
to go out to the garden and cut some
fresh mint for tea
He didn’t give Louise alcohol
or drugs
She was high on being with him
She was only sixteen
He fucked her
she got pregnant
he paid for the abortion
done in a private clinic
used by Hollywood stars
When she was waiting in the lobby
another young girl asked
Do I know you?
She never told her parents
That was the last she saw of H D
Now she’s drinking too much wine in Paris
It’s so many years later
she suddenly remembers him
She’s no longer angry
no longer sees herself
as a victim
She’s reading Frankenstein
for the fifth time
Her neck is swollen
Her friend comes back from the bathroom
lipstick smeared
Someone Mourns His Dog
Someone mourns his dog on Facebook
Someone celebrates a raise
Several people have insomnia
they always do this time of night
I run a record on yellow graph paper
I try to draw conclusions about the
world and the
“universe” by how many people have insomnia
on any given night
by how many people are angry with
other people for being
douche bags or assholes
Sometimes I make bets on horse races
based on this data
as if I could successfully generalize
across life domains
I’m spending way too
much time in front of my
computer
My muscles are getting smaller
and weaker
remarkably fast
Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over six hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize for work published in 2012, 2013, and 2014. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, 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.