1.
Dulce can’t sleep, her mind races. She thinks about things she don’t want to think about. Like a canary—she saw one she wanted so bad, but it was like… sixty bucks, so she bought her boyfriend a goldfish instead. He just looked at it. Didn’t say nothing.
2.
Then she married Dr. Manhattan, married the dull scalpel. She married Saran Wrap’s ultimate beauty, in the box with the cutter that slides so effortlessly. She married flowers that never die despite her wishes, that handcuff time, flowers with the souls of dead cops.
Here are my hands, she intones, high above Central Park, pressed against the window glass, testing its tensile strength. I’m watching, just watching, salt in my eyes, as if I’ve been swimming in the Dead Sea.
—
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.