Flash Fiction by Mitchell Grabois
1.
I wrote about nature, about parents and children and the terrible things they do to each other, about unemployment, poverty and humiliation. Now, every poem is a sonnet to sexual dysfunction and an ode to Viagra. There’s a new calm in the world. I’m a master of resignation. I might sound old but I’m not.
2.
Tums rules this dyspeptic universe. In other words: we can’t stomach the world. In other words: human nature is too much to take. Medical marijuana eases nausea. Acid reflux is one more aggravation. The acrobat on his unicycle balances a ten foot stack of dishes. I can make out a slice of pizza and a Ruben sandwich. He pedals backwards. He balances a ball on his nose. With his chin he eases a bottle of Tums from his shirt pocket. He tosses the bottle in the air. The tablets fly out like a spray of stars. All the constellations have stories. They all have something to complain about.
I wasn’t going to tell you, but I am suffering from stomach cancer. In the early days, friends would hear the news and say: I’m sorry, and I’d nearly shout at them: Don’t tell me you’re sorry. Tell Cancer you’re sorry. Because I’m going to kick Cancer’s ass, send him back to the Cancer Ward where he belongs, where he can lay on a bed naked and bleeding, and lick his wounds. That’s what I said in the early days, the Days of Hubris.
3.
God engineered the Universe, a masterwork of physics, chemistry, mathematics and art. His earthly animal designs contain mind-boggling genetics. Consider the architecture of the eye. But He fails at communication. He’s a monster. When His children misbehave, all he can think to do is drown them all, like a future sex offender down at the riverbank with a burlap sack of new kittens.
He is worse than Frankenstein’s monster. His clumsiness knows no bounds. Still, He demands our love and obedience.
4.
I cannot stop looking at your photo in its digital frame that my aunt has set up in her parlor and is lit twenty-four hours a day, like an electric memorial candle. Your overmedicated blue eyes are bright as marbles. Under your blue denim shirt, your skin is energetic, as are your small pointy breasts.
The photo shifts to one of Odetta, the blues singer. She holds up her hand like a milagro. Then that photo dissolves. There you are again, freckles on your nose and under the illuminated marbles that are your eyes, your throat bony, your expression inscrutable.
I awake from a two-second nap. Here you are again, no more scrutable, making your known unknown. It’s time to boil the forceps, you used to say. Your eyes are so blue, they have sucked in the sky and left the world sunk in blackness.
Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over seven 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.
Image: Eye by Dave Meier
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