day EIGHT HUNDRED and EIGHTY SIX

Michigan, Warmed

Islands of garbage

float across the ocean

They fester and reek

No ice in the world anymore

The only ice is in the dirty martini

I drink in the backyard

of my tropical Michigan paradise

My son is coming later to plant some more

palm trees

No corn anymore

no soybeans

Granddad would have been surprised to

see my sugar cane crop

the sweet smelling tassles

flowing in the breeze

I told him I’d never live here

I was pissed off, feeling confined by family farming

I wanted something bigger

greater

more life

No streets out here in the country

dirt roads

dirt and gravel

I’m done with drugs, Grandad

I know I broke your heart

but that’s what hearts are for

If you’d come from a city

you would have known that

Islands of garbage float across the ocean

They fester, reek

and the salmon and trout in Lake Michigan

have given way to

evil little fish that stowed away on river freighters

and came up from Chicago

riff raff with the blues

Doesn’t matter to me

I sold my boat long ago

I lay out in the backyard working on my tan

and watch the

palm fronds sway in the breeze

Fruit rats in the sapodilla trees jump from

branch to branch

If only Grandad could see them!

He’d laugh

The old, mean wasps are still here

Sometimes one stings me in the face

but that hardly disturbs me

drinking my dirty martinis

in my tropical Michigan paradise 

--Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois

Work by Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois appears in magazines worldwide. Nominated for numerous prizes, he was awarded the 2017 Booranga Centre (Australia) Fiction Prize. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and as a print edition. His poetry collection, THE ARREST OF MR. KISSY FACE, published in March 2019 by Pski’s Porch Publications, is available here. Visit his website to read more of his poetry and flash fiction.