JUKE
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JOINT
Like elton john selling boiled peanuts outside seaside,
I too am out of place. A hearse would be no heavier with my body. In other words, call me a believer, or a girl’s handstand on Panama City Beach Pier, the acid-green drip from a boy’s snow cone. Watch me two-step in and out of space amid sand dunes, my denim pockets fat with broken sand-dollars and a chest full of the ripest hurricane, the beachgrass telepathic. See me slip between the boardwalk’s slats and solve my own riddles as a family screams away in a Lincoln Navigator, only an alligator floaty—no child—left in the lot. Watch me take it out by those water-slapped docks, becoming fin and feather, a fantasia of flotsam choked up by Poseidon himself. I know, too, an angry son, a dead eye, a sheep’s cry, untrim the sail and sing my pride between the boulders flung vast and blast the bow onwards to my childhood’s shore in Cromer, where I become a whelk deep in the malt vinegar of a Styrofoam cup, a penny jammed in an arcade slot until I finally spark and kindle my own religion: Prometheus in a pillbox hat, moonwalking into the sweet shop for a bagful of cherry bonbons and a cheeky kiss from the cashier. Watch me chant Freddie back and shave his mustache into the most perfect heart.
Early Morning in Tallahassee
The light a wash of blue-gray
on the blinds,
and my years-long tinnitus
from all the noise rock
is somehow less.
After a minute, I fumble naked
out of the sheets.
Why is there always
a part of me
that resists the day?
The cat uncurls and yawns.
If I were younger,
I’d cover myself
and say sorry,
throwing on a robe before
forking out her
Fancy Feast. Now, at 30,
I flick on the light
and fill the stainless-steel kettle.
How far I’ve come.
In a past life, in Callaway,
I tossed a dining chair
at a friend of a friend
and missed, though
not the clown figurines.
I blamed the three Coors
and endless shots
of Old Crow. 12 years later,
I’m two months sober.
But fruit flies still
dally the peaches
and litterbox, although
they may be gnats,
but don’t ask me
the difference.
I only know one thing—
my first love was
a blond-haired boy
named Josh.
Josh of the glow-
in-the-dark ceiling stars
and pull-out cot. Josh
of the Nerf guns
and tiny Lakenheath igloo,
which collapsed on us.
Where are you now,
and why is the boy in me
still bearing you?
In the dentist's office, d.c.
My loafers are higher
than my head on this hard,
ivory-colored chair
on D St. NW.
The dentist, who is my age,
30, and very nice,
has been gone a long while,
long enough for me
to feel again the horror
at every possibility
on Web MD, although
the dentist reassured me
that the ulcers are benign,
from the Latin benignus,
meaning kindly,
which they are anything but,
caving into my gums,
my tongue, the floor & roof
of my mouth, the back
of my throat & arriving
with a sting like yellow-
jackets, which I’m battling
on my patio, or in-laws—
but let’s not get into that—
or bees, whom I could forgive
& whose honey helps
heal them, these canker sores—
there are so many names
for every God-made thing,
even though I don’t believe
in Him. No, I prefer
sea salt on a wettened Q-tip
pressed right into
the yellow-gray matter
of them, saying You will not win
even though my eyes tear
& my mouth beads
& my temples rage &
rage against these sometimes-
bloody raids
lesions & lesions &
who are they to stop
my drinking, my acid-eating—
who are they to say
Own your inheritance. Yeah,
I went gluten free
in fear of celiac disease,
which 23andMe said
I’m at a higher risk of,
but I don’t think that’s it.
No, my mind always
goes straight to—what else—
cancer: Oh, you’re such a prima-donna,
which always makes me
think of Madonna & those
slender pink-fun gloves
unlike the dentist’s fat
clinic-blue forefinger—
We need to do something
about this gum recession—
probing this other
raw and holy cavity.
Iain Grinbergs (he/they) is a former middle school teacher who's pursuing a PhD in creative writing at Florida State University. He's a finalist in Black Lawrence Press's Fall 2021 Black River Chapbook Competition. You can find more of his recent work in Ghost Parachute and Jersey Devil Press.