Cracked

by Michael Graber

 

Useless as a cracked egg, nothing more than a car
on blocks, a wife tenderized with forged prescriptions,
a couple of happy kids and a weeks' worth of food stamps
a month-and Armani & Benz feel natural.
So spins my family fortune.

My grandfather, a star
in my personal constellation, orphaned at eight,
slept under a staircase. At eighteen, he fed the city. Like so many
legends, the plot twists on a priest. This one stole a few
chickens from the convent, pitying the boy's potbelly.
That little devil didn't eat them. He delighted in the peep show,
studied their mating intricacies-the backward strut, the difference
between a peck and bite-then sold half the eggs, hatched the others,
birthing an empire.

Within a year of his grand death my father's
ambition crashed into a guard rail. The company screeched
into Chapter 11. A second DUI and my nest egg was sold
at auction. I'm not bitter, and the education it afforded
lets me read life as an epic. I wasn't prepared for fairy tale, though.
When my oldest daughter won a goose on Halloween
the irony eluded me. When I first cleaned the coup
I knew my wife was mocking me again. The Golden Egg,
a joke as old as dirt. The jeweler set me straight. Like sun,
every morning for forty days an egg worth ten thousand
appeared. In forty days and Benz and Armani rise again,
warm with life, soft like smooth skin. Even a miracle
couldn't shake my spending, even ten thousand a day,
tax free, couldn't quiet this consuming beast. The first
VISA bill kicked in my panic. The children gawked as I blew
through the den, filet knife in hand. I grabbed the slow
goose by its weird, thin neck, raised it eye-level, sliced it
in two. Nothing. No eggs inside.

A bigger debt than before,
big as greed, and a blood-stained oxford pinpoint are the only
remaining evidence. Even Epstein, the jeweler, denied my story
to the creditors. Now, my wife and kids don't write, don't visit.
At least the jury sent me here instead of jail. The food's better.

 

© 2005 Michael Graber

Michael Graber is the author of "The Last Real Medicine Show," published by Turning Point Books. When not writing, he chases after his three children and plays mandolin with The Bluff City Backsliders.