Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over a thousand of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He has been nominated for numerous prizes.  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.

Worse

Mankind is getting worse
We’re worse than the Goths
and Vandals who sacked Rome

and ate all the green and yellow parakeets in Egypt
We’re worse
than the Soviets
who ate the peach-faced love birds

We’re worse than the Icelandics
who spear puffins for
thin slivers of meat
and serve them with a liquor known
as Black Death

We’re worse than the Americans
who rid the Iraqi sky of every sparrow,
who built five-hundred-foot-tall turbines
in their own heartland
with blades that knock down bald eagles
and peregrine falcons
and mosquito-eating bats

We deserve
what’s coming
to us