Four Poems || Mitchell Grabois

Montejo
 
For a full year, Conquerer Montejo
stayed in this complex, near
Center of the Sky
and Knife of Flint
 
He’d left Europe heartbroken
vowing never to put his penis
into another woman
 
so he stayed in a chamber
deep in this complex
dedicated to the Mayan divinity Baklum Cha’an
Phallus of the Earth in Plain Sight
 
 and read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel
Love in the Time of Cholera
about love long-suffering and unrequited
a book that wouldn’t be written
for hundreds of years
 
 
Big Dust
 
I huddled in the roughly carpentered library
A sand storm raged outside
I’d sought refuge from the choking dust
Wind blew through cracks  
 
I flipped on a computer
I felt the digital world smash into me
like a fat-tired bicyclist
running me down
on the trail
 
The librarian gave me a dirty look
unmindful that I could pick her up
and toss her into the onslaught
like a sack of stolen pistachios
 
Some girl who thought she was the Lamb of God
came to help me
I knew she wanted my big dick in her
I knew she wanted to expire in my storm
 
She led me like a dumb animal
We searched for my mother’s name
Motherfuck there she is
her mug shot
6 foot 3
290 pounds of meanness  
I came out of that
Her first name was Wilma
Her nickname was “Big Dust”
 
The storm abated
the librarian asked me to leave
The Lamb of God and I walked out to her rusted-out
Chevy pick-up
and got in
She started the engine
with a roar


Coal
 
I chew coal for extra nrgy
Wind turbines
blow a deadly breeze my way
 
In the migrant trailer
in which I live
I flex my biceps in front of the mirror
to prove that I still exist
I grin
with black teeth
Script for the company store
is scattered on the rug like fallen leaves
 
I have a woman
but I’ve misplaced her
I go looking for another chunk
of coal
 
 
Cambodia
 
The glass shards embedded in my side
work their way out slowly
 
but sometimes emerge quickly
as if my body is spitting them
 
Once a Vietnamese girl woke by my side bleeding,
the projectiles having pierced her as she slept
 
She screamed
She knew a bad omen when she saw one
a lover with a weapon for a body
 
I had to run
Her father was the police chief
 
She hadn’t given me time to explain
I crossed the border into Cambodia