Birthday | Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois

Mrs. G
one of my bosses
knew I was a heavy drinker

On Monday
which happened to be my birthday
She trapped me behind the deli counter
put her hands on my shoulders, and sniffed me
for alcohol
fresh or metabolized

It was also the birthday of Janis Joplin
who I once drove to the airport
only months before she died
from a spoon of bad heroin

and the birthday of Robert E. Lee
near whose final battlefield
I was stabbed
by a drunken, abusive Indian whose son
was on my list of cases

It was also the birthday of Mohammed and of
Edgar Allan Poe, two gentlemen with fevered imaginations

and of James Winston Watts
an ardent practitioner of pre-frontal lobotomies

and of Minnesota Fats
and the Seventh Earl of Carnarvon
whose real name was
Henry George Reginald Molyneux Herbert
Racing Manager to Queen Elizabeth

In 1956, Carnarvon (then known as Lord Porchester)
fell in love with an Anglo-American, Jean Margaret Wallop
of Big Horn, Wyoming
and they were married

It was also the birthday of Tippi Hedren whom
Alfred Hitchcock terrified with birds

of Junior Seau
who committed suicide due to major depression
induced by too many head injuries
while playing in the NFL

It was also the birthday of Dolly Parton
and of Nicole, the Chilean singer
and Cocco, the Ryukyan songstress

also of Edwidge Danticat the writer from Haiti
that benighted country
so severly punished by France
for throwing off the yoke of slavery

and of John Bouvier Kennedy Schlossberg
who carries ancestral burdens
and pots of money

All these people
living or dead
were celebrating their birthdays
on Earth
or in Heaven
or Hell

while my boss, Mrs. G
sniffed me for the scent of alcohol
fresh or metabolized

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… A Variety of Literature and Poetry from Indian Literature Review….

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.