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Black Brassiere

From the top of the Roman arena
I watch groups of schoolchildren move in clumps
and think: Children are not our future
They’re merely the next set of pawns

Across the street
on a balcony with cracked tiles
an old woman hangs out wash—
black brassiere, black panties
Maybe she’s doing laundry for her daughter or granddaughter

I watch pigeons on the roof
I get hypnotized by them

When I come out of my trance
I see that the children are gone
The Roman arena is empty again

At this moment
Americans are torturing
Iraqi prisoners of war

but I won’t know that until later

 
Poisoned

I was poisoned in 2009
I cannot be poisoned again

In Greece I saw a young woman put her arm
down her lover’s throat
to the elbow
thinking she could capture the deadly drugs
he’d ingested

I was poisoned in 2009
I cannot be poisoned again

Poison comes in many forms
Some of it is white powder
Some of it blows in the wind
Some is traceable
some not

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Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over fourteen-hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He has been nominated for numerous prizes, and was awarded the 2017 Booranga Writers’ Centre (Australia) Prize for Fiction. 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. To read more of his work, Google Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois. He lives in Denver, Colorado.