Janitrix
My college janitor always listened to me, so I confided in her. She was on her knees scrubbing floors but stopped to look straight at me. ‘Why haven’t you done it then? Why haven’t you killed yourself yet?’ I found myself sputtering. I said I wasn’t sure. I wanted to end it, to end myself. She shrugged and bent back to her work. ‘You won’t have wasted your life,’ she said. ‘You can always be a bad example.’
Ripe
Walking through the Haitian slum of Cité Soleil, we found the child. Flies had nearly eaten his ear clean off, ripe for the picking. His mother did not want our help because we were white missionaries. She did not want us to bathe her child, nor did she trust the antibiotics we offered her free of charge. When we told her that without help the child would die, she spat, “Then I will just have another one.” I looked at her as she stood there—beautiful, proud and defiant. I looked at the child staring at her, too weak to blink.
Mark Hendrickson
Mark Hendrickson is a gay poet and former psychiatric nurse living in the Des Moines area. A 2024 Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, he has been published in McNeese Review, Vestal Review, Variant Lit, The Ekphrastic Review, and others. Follow him @MarkHPoetry or visit www.markhendricksonpoetry.com.
