poems by Mitchell Grabois

Inferno

 

I thought I’d read the Inferno aloud to my wife

while we were house-sitting in a drafty old farmhouse in Umbria

but after a while

Hell got boring

It didn’t take very long

 

We started watching TV instead

the Italian version of Wheel of Fortune

with a former Miss Sweden

playing the Vanna White role

 

Miss Sweden strides across the stage on her endless legs

then turns, and her skirt swirls for the benefit of the “buttocks cam”

placed below stage level

 

My wife’s intrinsic lesbianism, usually well-hidden,

ignites and she falls to the floor and writhes as one possessed

 

It’s only when I change the channel to

Arabic porn that she momentarily settles down

I began to recite from the Inferno again

 

 

 

Lemon Drops

 

Lemon drops melt like troubles

down my

cancer-ravaged throat

 

I thought I was a made man

with my black leather hat

and Cuban cigars

but I am unmade

 

I have unmade myself

That’s always the way it is

 

whether you’ve organized your crimes

or left them unorganized

 

whether you’re Julius Caesar

or just some douche bag out on the

dirty street corner

trying to sing a capella

 

 

 

Demon

 

The woman with the dead eyes

gave me a sexually transmitted demon

She didn’t even have to touch me

She did it through my laptop screen

 

The woman with the dead eyes

is a venereal kitty

She’s a human immunodeficiency virus

but she’s not human

not really

The sum toto

of her experiences

have bashed the humanity out of her

 

I didn’t click away fast enough

she got me

gave me a sexually transmitted demon

she’s not even pretty

she’s ugly

according to Western standards of beauty

Eastern too

North and South

 

She’s an evil scag

all she cares about are the unmet needs

of her vagina

 

She poked me

and it was

the beginning of the end