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. His short fiction and poems
have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines in the U.S. and internationally. He has been nominated for the
Pushcart Prize, most recently for his story “Purple Heart,” published in The Examined Life in 2012, and
for his poem “Birds,” published in The Blue Hour in 2013. Grabois’s novel, Two-Headed Dog,
is available for all e-readers for 99 cents.
Sometimes I wish I were still out on the back porch, drinking jet fuel with the boys
—Tony Hoagland
Gasoline smells like gin
sweet and clear
I’ve loved that smell
since junior high
when me and Pollo Murillo and Hector Delgadillo
huffed it from the jerry can
in Pollo’s dim garage
Isn’t “jerry can” an incandescent phrase
transcending its simple language?
Delgadillo said I was Mexican
I said, I’m a Jew
Delgadillo said: You may be a Jew
in your shaved-off prick
but you are Mexican in the soul
unpredictable, combustible
Then he passed me the jerry can
no worries about bogarting that
there was plenty for all
Murillo ran off a mountain road
Delgadillo went to prison
and got shanked by the Aryan Brotherhood
Fuck them
I’m a Mexican
and will wait for my chance
to wage revenge