We siblings converge on my father’s house, a mecca for decades-old newspapers, prospectuses, sales materials, unpaid bills, and boxes piled high from floor to ceiling blocking access to the refrigerator, which has not been opened for years and is home for long spoiled foods, unidentifiable blobs of black fused to its inside walls; the boxes even claiming two-thirds of his bed where he used to sleep on filthy sheets soiled with the sweat, blood, and tears of a dying man.
My brother discovers a stash of $100-dollar bills among the detritus in our father’s bedroom, $1,200 in total. Within a few hours, the $1,200 mysteriously disappears. The fingers all point in one direction, but we are not about to require a strip search and the stash is gone, stolen by a sibling who has already bankrupted himself, his father, and his mother.
the affronts
stack up like wrecked cars
and worn tires—
the frenzied barking
of a junkyard dog
is a CPA, attorney, and poet who lives in Los Angeles, California. His writing has been widely published in prestigious poetry journals, has been translated into several languages, and has won numerous awards worldwide. Michael’s recent publications include two illustrated children’s books, Cassandra and the Strange Tale of the Blue-Footed Boobies and Johnny and Frankie’s Summer Sleepover, as well as a book of poetry, Notes from a Commode: Volume I. A fourth book, The Squeeping Catterwhip, is now available on Amazon.
