Contributor: M. Krochmalnik Grabois

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Historically, God had compassion for whores and lepers
so
(reasoned Reverend Anne,
a 60-year-old minister who’d retired from her first career
as an English teacher
and had gone from parsing grammar
to parsing the Seven Deadly Sins)
He would also have
compassion for Governor Chris Christie
of New Jersey
even though Christie was a blowhard
a braggart and a bully
mired in political scandal
involving political revenge

They know about revenge in New Jersey
It was where Tony Soprano the Mafia boss lived
Soprano and Christie were both big fat men
who demanded respect and sneered a lot
They would have enjoyed a cigar together
and a single malt whiskey neat

Christie would have enjoyed the same with James Gandolfini
the actor who played Tony Soprano
but Gandolfini died of a heart attack at age 51
which might have encouraged Christie to get
lap band surgery
which didn’t seem to be working too well
at least not as quickly as for other patients

Reverend Anne thought Christie deserved
some compassion
to temper
the general public response to him
which ranged from ridicule to contempt

She began to study him
looking in the nooks and crannies of his life
for praiseworthy qualities

but then she realized the obvious:
that God’s love was unconditional
and she stopped looking


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M. Krochmalnik Grabois’ poems 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 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, 2013. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for 99 cents from Kindle and Nook, or as a print edition.