Renters by Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois

I am thrilled to be dying so fast

Malignancy is a thrill ride

Acceleration is all

A realtor once brought me to an AIDS house

Two gay men were dying

one on each floor

Each was full of holy suffering

each attended by friends

who turned from their grief 

to give me serious stink-eye

One turned on me: 

Can’t you wait for him to die? You vulture!

This was Key West 

I left the house furious

I ordered my wife

to fire the realtor

But my wife was having an affair with her

so she refused 

and the three of us stayed in an uneasy imbalance

I was secretly happy that the realtor was fat and homely

and had a stupid name 

and a stupid Southern accent

I was happy that my wife couldn’t do any better than that

We never bought a house

We just kept renting

as property values 

and rents

skyrocketed  

*****

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, USA.