Infrasonics
Men have no trouble letting Claire go
The sounds of her mind working
too low in frequency to hear
perturb them
as does the noise
her paintings make as they dry
and her organs, as they decay
the sound of God
like a pinball
bouncing around her torso
with no place to rest
Sweet L.A.
The new waitress has a masculine look,
a look I’ve seen before,
one that makes me think her father was an engineer
electrician or pipefitter
A square jaw
rectangular glasses to correct myopia
Her arms have good muscle tone
not like she’s been working out at a gym
but like she’s done manual labor
and being a waitress seems cushy by comparison
A girl in my neighborhood had that look
when I was in junior high
I used to walk down the alley, climb her fence
crawl in her window
She often sat on the window sill listening to rock’n’roll
The Lovin’ Spoonful was her favorite
a band perfect for summers in L.A.
Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck getting’ dirty and gritty
She acted like a slut but really wasn’t
She liked me because I saw through her
Today Denver feels a lot like L.A.
dry
early cool defers to heat
smoke from fires in nearby states
obscure the Front Range
The portable radio talks of drought in Texas
and the water problems of the American West
Close by, at a house renovation
a workman runs a circular saw
There’s inertia in the air
I look out across the parking lot
of a shopping center
I used to shoplift record albums
from a store surrounded by baking asphalt
and give them to that girl in my neighborhood
It was sweet getting away with that
Glitterbang
Cheryl gets off the bus at the wrong stop and is
surrounded by women about to explode
into glitter
women who wear their features as if they
own them
as if they belong on their faces
women with symmetry and grace
women with so much confidence that
if they wanted to
they could destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons program
with a thrust of their breasts
Cheryl pulls her raincoat tightly around her
but her darkness escapes
drawn by light
The black hole that is her soul
sucks in all the stylish women
dozens of them
until the sidewalks are empty
Another bus pulls to the curb
The doors open
Cheryl climbs in
Jazz
Jazz propels me forward
Rumba cha-cha
and meringue
a ballroom dance
with a stiff-legged limping step
best danced during earthquakes
hurricanes
or at funerals
or on the day one enters a mental hospital
not as an employee but the other thing
—
Mitchell Krochmalnik Grabois was born in the Bronx and now splits his time between Denver and a one-hundred-and-twenty-year-
