{"id":6422,"date":"2014-01-16T00:00:08","date_gmt":"2014-01-16T05:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/home\/?p=6422"},"modified":"2014-01-16T15:43:20","modified_gmt":"2014-01-16T20:43:20","slug":"infrasonics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/infrasonics\/","title":{"rendered":"Infrasonics"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Infrasonics\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Infrasonics<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Men have no trouble letting Claire go<\/p>\n

The sounds of her mind working<\/p>\n

too low in frequency to hear<\/p>\n

perturb them<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

as does the noise<\/p>\n

her paintings make as they dry<\/p>\n

and her organs, as they decay<\/p>\n

the sound of God<\/p>\n

like a pinball<\/p>\n

bouncing around her torso<\/p>\n

with no place to rest<\/p>\n

Sweet L.A.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The new waitress has a masculine look,<\/p>\n

a look I\u2019ve seen before,<\/p>\n

one that makes me think her father was an engineer<\/p>\n

electrician or pipefitter<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A square jaw<\/p>\n

rectangular glasses to correct myopia<\/p>\n

Her arms have good muscle tone<\/p>\n

not like she\u2019s been working out at a gym<\/p>\n

but like she\u2019s done manual labor<\/p>\n

and being a waitress seems cushy by comparison<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A girl in my neighborhood had that look<\/p>\n

when I was in junior high<\/p>\n

I used to walk down the alley, climb her fence<\/p>\n

crawl in her window<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

She often sat on the window sill listening to rock\u2019n\u2019roll<\/p>\n

The Lovin\u2019 Spoonful<\/i> was her favorite<\/p>\n

a band perfect for summers in L.A.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hot town, summer in the city<\/i><\/p>\n

Back of my neck getting\u2019 dirty and gritty<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

She acted like a slut but really wasn\u2019t<\/p>\n

She liked me because I saw through her<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Today Denver feels a lot like L.A.<\/p>\n

dry<\/p>\n

early cool defers to heat<\/p>\n

smoke from fires in nearby states<\/p>\n

obscure the Front Range<\/p>\n

The portable radio talks of drought in Texas<\/p>\n

and the water problems of the American West<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Close by, at a house renovation<\/p>\n

a workman runs a circular saw<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There\u2019s inertia in the air<\/p>\n

I look out across the parking lot<\/p>\n

of a shopping center<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I used to shoplift record albums<\/p>\n

from a store surrounded by baking asphalt<\/p>\n

and give them to that girl in my neighborhood<\/p>\n

It was sweet getting away with that<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Glitterbang<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Cheryl gets off the bus at the wrong stop and is<\/p>\n

surrounded by women about to explode<\/p>\n

into glitter<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

women who wear their features as if they<\/p>\n

own them<\/p>\n

as if they belong on their faces<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

women with symmetry and grace<\/p>\n

women with so much confidence that<\/p>\n

if they wanted to<\/p>\n

they could destroy Iran\u2019s nuclear weapons program<\/p>\n

with a thrust of their breasts<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Cheryl pulls her raincoat tightly around her<\/p>\n

but her darkness escapes<\/p>\n

drawn by light<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The black hole that is her soul<\/p>\n

sucks in all the stylish women<\/p>\n

dozens of them<\/p>\n

until the sidewalks are empty<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Another bus pulls to the curb<\/p>\n

The doors open<\/p>\n

Cheryl climbs in<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0Jazz<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jazz propels me forward<\/p>\n

Rumba cha-cha<\/p>\n

and meringue<\/p>\n

a ballroom dance<\/p>\n

with a stiff-legged limping step<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

best danced during earthquakes<\/p>\n

hurricanes<\/p>\n

or at funerals<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

or on the day one enters a mental hospital<\/p>\n

not as an employee but the other thing<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

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 poems have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines in the U.S. and internationally. He is a regular contributor to\u00a0The Prague Revue<\/i>. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, most recently for his story \u201cPurple Heart\u201d published in\u00a0The Examined Life<\/i>\u00a0in 2012, and for his poem. \u201cBirds,\u201d published in The Blue Hour, 2013. Grabois\u2019s novel,\u00a0Two-Headed Dog<\/b>, is available for all e-readers for 99 cents. Click for\u00a0Kindle<\/a>. Click for\u00a0Nook<\/a>. Click for the\u00a0print edition<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Men have no trouble letting Claire go<\/p>\n

The sounds of her mind working<\/p>\n

too low in frequency to hear<\/p>\n

perturb them<\/p>\n

as does the noise<\/p>\n

her paintings make as they dry<\/p>\n

and her organs, as they decay<\/p>\n

the sound of God<\/p>\n

like a pinball<\/p>\n

READ MORE.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":175,"featured_media":6671,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,218,219,199],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6422"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6422"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6675,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6422\/revisions\/6675"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}