Heart
Amanda Roundhouse got cut
She wasn’t looking
Her heart’s in a Mississippi chicken shack
among the livers and gizzards
the tabletop carved by people desperate to be remembered
failed poets and novelists
Heavy metal oysters, crackers, Tabasco, Amanda’s heart
Album
Amanda is too thin to find in dim light
She bought a leather-bound foto album
but left it on a Greyhound bus
Luckily she’d only put one photo in it
a photo of herself she hated
one in which her face was puffy, her lips mismatched
her breasts fallen
a helpless look
She left it on the bus and now that longhaired girl
is gone
Mitchell Krochmalnik Grabois was born in the Bronx and now splits his time between Denver and a one-hundred-and-twenty-year-old, one room schoolhouse in Riverton Township, Michigan. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, most recently for his story “Purple Heart” published in The Examined Life in 2012. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, is available for all e-readers for 99 cents. A print edition is available through Amazon.