{"id":2858,"date":"2014-08-15T20:02:32","date_gmt":"2014-08-15T20:02:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/?p=2858"},"modified":"2014-08-15T21:33:16","modified_gmt":"2014-08-15T21:33:16","slug":"piranha-poem-by-mitchell-krockmalnik-grabois","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/piranha-poem-by-mitchell-krockmalnik-grabois\/","title":{"rendered":"Piranha. Poem by Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\n 
\n 
\nThe circus poster featured two beautiful girls
\nin a tank filled with ravenous piranha
\nThis image appealed to the Sicilian soul
\nBut the woman I was with
\nwho had been on the lam
\nsince the seventies for
\nbeing a domestic terrorist
\nhaving bombed a police station
\ntold me that the circus manager cooled the water to nearly
\nfreezing to keep the piranha inactive
\nStill, the women
\nwho were not nearly as beautiful
\nas the women on the poster
\nlooked terrified
\nmaybe not of the toothy fish
\nbut of the icy exposure
\nIt was winter, which made it worse
\nThey could not step from the tank
\ninto Sicilian heat
\n 
\n 
\nThey\u2019d been waiting in a battered trailer
\nlocked in a lesbian embrace
\ntrying to build up some body heat
\na futile act
\nconsidering how fast it would dissipate
\nin the icy water
\n 
\n 
\nMaybe the tropical piranha were just as terrified
\nEach ice bath threatened death
\n 
\n 
\nThe circus owners were also scared
\nbecause piranha were expensive
\nThey had considered replacing them with
\nother, less dangerous fish
\nand calling them piranha
\nbut didn\u2019t think they could get away with it
\nThey would be discovered and ruined
\n 
\n 
\nSo the women gingerly descended the
\ntwo metal steps from the trailer
\n 
\nThese women were Rumanian sex slaves
\nwho had to do what they were told
\n 
\nI was eating blue cotton candy when my lover
\nthe domestic terrorist
\nexplained all this
\n 
\nI could never fully accept that she had
\nbombed a police station
\nI couldn\u2019t see her doing it
\nShe was so soft in bed
\n 
\nI had met her at a gelato stand
\nin Agrigento
\non Sicily\u2019s rugged south coast
\nand we talked about flavors while the counter girl
\nscooped our cones
\n 
\nAs the women submerged themselves in the
\npiranha tank
\na cold wind whipped down from Mt. Etna
\nscouring us with pumice
\nand heavy volcanic dust
\nruining my cotton candy
\nI threw it off the bleachers
\nthen followed\u2014
\njumped off
\nthe fifth row plank
\nI felt something give in my left knee
\n 
\n 
\nI picked up a fist sized rock
\nlike the one the hobo heaved in Ironwood, the novel
\nby William Kennedy
\nI wound up
\nlike a big league pitcher
\nand let fly
\nshattered the tank
\n 
\nAll the piranha and the two Rumanian sex slaves
\ncame out in a flood onto the rocky soil
\n 
\nThe piranha flopped and the women gasped
\nThey bled from minor glass cuts
\n 
\nThe domestic terrorist and I each grabbed
\na sex slave by the hand
\nand ran
\n<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\n\"Mitchell<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nMitchell Krockmalnik Grabois\u2019 poems and fictions have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He is a regular contributor to The Prague Revue, and has been thrice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for 99 cents from Kindle<\/a> and Nook<\/a> or as a Print Edition <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

robin@artvilla.com<\/a><\/p>\n

www.facebook.com\/PoetryLifeTimes<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/strong><\/p>\n

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      The circus poster featured two beautiful girls in a tank filled with ravenous piranha This image appealed to the Sicilian soul But the woman I was with who had been on the lam since the seventies for being a domestic terrorist having bombed a police station told me that the circus manager … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2859,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567,43],"tags":[18,136,3],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2858"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2858"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2883,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2858\/revisions\/2883"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}