THE HOMESICK MORTICIAN

PETER MLADINIC

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York
The Homesick Mortician
by Peter Mladinic
Copyright © 2024

Published by BlazeVOX [books]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without

the publisher’s written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.

Printed in the United States of America

Interior design and typesetting by Geo rey Gatza

Cover Art: Memories of Capri, John Singer Sargent
ff
First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-471-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2024931651

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The Homesick Mortician

She buried the man who took her

to the senior prom,
the homesick mortician.
Her voice husky like a ditch digger’s,

her frame petite, Star City’s

Mary Lois, divorced, with no children,
is all movie star charm,
but her face is a little pinched, eyes,

nose, and mouth a bit too close.

That prom night they slow danced
to Thomas Wayne’s “Romance
in the Dark,” and kissed, Star City knows.

She prepped him for the eternal prom.

Who pinned an orchid on me,
thinks Mary Lois. He ceased to be.
They brought him home.

11
Time the Nemesis

A Wheaten Terrier with a cropped tail

and firm butt strutted a trail.
Gold-blonde, the wiry yet soft coat.
The haunches, curved like tops
of boxing gloves, moved up and down.
As one rose the other fell, all one,
integral with the beating heart,
the eyes’ gleam, the tongue’s dart,
the muzzle’s light black beard.
A living slinky toy, slinking, shear
up and down time’s stairs.
She became like a stick of furniture,
bony, creaky, so to be hoisted.
“She’s crossing over.” Then she did.

12
Love Will Come

Flex September 1964

Married to Joe Weider, a partner in Weider
Enterprises, challenged to stay fit
for my spouse and myself
I do inclined dumbbell presses for chest,
fly aways for shoulders and deltoids,
a Weider machine for gluts, thighs
and calves, pulley pulldowns for triceps,
for biceps dumbbell curls. Ladies,
follow my routine to stay toned, conditioned.
Guys, if you want Larry Scott thighs,
Steve Reeves pecs, Leroy Colbert biceps,
lats like Freddy Ortiz, take my tips.
You’ll see a leaner face,
a body glistening with vitality in the mirror.
Last month I wrote about the 90 day
Muscle Beach workout,
to be done while intermittently sipping
a shake of tiger’s milk
and Hoffman protein powder.
I wrote about dumbbell rows, the Weider
reclining bench. Exploring limits
I’m writing today about the whole person.
Say you’ve got this great body,
love is the spiritual finishing touch.
Keep consistent, watch what you eat,
in the gym stay hungry.
Love will come. It’s finding yourself
and The one for you, dear reader.
Look for my forthcoming column
in Muscle Fitness and, if in Santa Monica,
stop by the Weider gym. Mostly,
keep pushing, go forward. Love will come.
Yours in health and happiness,
Betty Weider

13
From Hobbs to Saskatchewan

We are far from an ocean,

far from a river, a sizeable lake,
yet underground water sustains us.
For cooking, washing, drinking
it quenches us, our bodies and minds.
Thus we imagine a lake and travel
till what could be becomes a man
angling for walleye in a boat on Jan Lake,
which, when he’s not there, is mostly ice.

14
Shaking Things Up

Shaking the cottonwood

I’m the north wind,
the o in work
in the Will Work for Food sign
at Turner and Sanger.

15
Mirror

There’s a mirror and the mirror’s other side

no one looks at
kisses a wall.

There’s a mirror,
one of those square mirrors
ladies would take from their purses
before church to look at themselves.
Those mirrors had other sides.

16
White House / Death House

What’s a little self-promotion, some me-

time. Danny Rolling for President of Hell.
Some believe in white privilege. I believe
in poetic justice. While you have neighbors
I have fellow sufferers. Sure, I was smacked
by my state trooper dad. Sure, I stabbed
and even took off a human head, posed it
and sat in the bedroom where she died by
my hand, as did others in Gainesville.
I camped in woods. I strummed a guitar;
Like Manson, I wrote songs, like Bundy
I slaughtered in Gainesville. Ted Bundy
for President! Bundy in the White House.
Me, Danny in the Death House we have
here, me and my fellow sufferers. Michael
Franzese, who did time, said if one innocent
is killed, the death penalty’s not worth it.
But what about self-loathing savages,
sub-human scum such as I? What was
coming to me I got, then some. I’m here,
burning eternally. Here with Ted.
Twiddling our thumbs, our souls suffering.
If even one innocent person...what about
the non-innocents? What was good for me
should be also for them. My constituency,
fellow sufferers, believe as I believe.
White privilege or no, put Danny Rolling
in the Death House in 2024. What we have
down here is like your White House up there.
Strapped to a gurney I was injected. Ones
who thought that too good for me were
right. I should have been killed, brought
back, killed again and again at taxpayers’
expense, but the dumb bastards showed
me a kindness I never showed that lady
whose severed head I posed on a bureau.
17
Schaeffer Speaking

The blister in the palm of my hand found its voice,

the voice of the rosebush in the wind.
I tried to make it into another Charlie McCarthy
but it wouldn’t sit on my knee.
I tried to make it stand in a choir but it wouldn’t stand still
or wear the blue robe the choir wore.
Then I tried to make it a detective’s questioning voice,
then the voice of a paramour speaking on a lake bank
to his love whose back is turned to him.
I tried to make it the voice of a man trying to remember
his neighbor’s voice, a wife and a mother.
I didn’t like the blister’s voice.
I liked the voice of a man who worked in a tobacco shop
and the voice of a man who couldn’t live with
and couldn’t live without his mother.
Then the blister, having found its voice,
assumed the voice of a terrier, then the voice of a footfall
snapping a twig, and then the voice of a radio
personality who was rich all because of his voice.
I wanted the blister to speak directly to me.
It recited “The Whitsun Weddings.”
Then it assumed the cry of an infant,
then a man crying in a graveyard.

18
Light and Dark

Edison gave us light,

and for that like any sane person
I’m down on my knees thanking him.
But what about Topsy the elephant?
A barker shoved the orange tip
of a smoke up the elephant’s trunk.
She sprained the barker’s foot
or caused him some slight injury and
for that stood in chains outside
a tent. Electricity shot through her.
Edison shook hands with circus higher ups
and ones who did the dark work.

So they chained her so she couldn’t move,

couldn’t get away, couldn’t flee, run
for her life, they somehow inserted wires,
to her flanks her chest, hunches. The mass
of her physical presence, a hand threw
a lever, a switch. Edison had it all set, so
the agony start was sudden. How quick.
She didn’t suffer long, the jolts, a hand
threw a switch, bolts of electricity jolted
through her, smoke rose from the ground
but what you can’t see on YouTube is blood
in her eyes blood beneath her ear flaps.

The beginning middle end agony, at least

she didn’t suffer. What an obscene joke,
what a good laugh the sadists had then
as she, chained, went nowhere but down.
Edison didn’t laugh, it was in the interest
of science, to see if it would work, death
19
by electricity, the pre-electric chair days,
before the we’ll strap him into the chair
throw a switch, end this human monster’s
time on earth days. This was an elephant
had kicked a sadist who’d shoved a lit
cigarette up her trunk, for that was killed.

Edison didn’t laugh. The experiment worked.

So an elephant’s one moment here the next
gone. Worked on her, will work on a criminal.
So Edison gave us both light and dark.
Death, destruction, blood in her eyes, blood
pouring out her anus, not on YouTube. We
hear nothing, days before talkies. 1903.
What’s another dead elephant, experiment
a success. Edison felt good. Carcass gone,
time to break out the champagne, toast this
scientific advancement. You don’t see blood
in her eyes. Chains, smoke, her going down.

20
A Though Z

A is for asshole, b is for bayou,

under the willow by the bayou.
C for caress, for Charlie in produce
with his red apron and black tie.
D for Dangerfield, Rodney,
I can’t get no respect. E, eagle,
the American eagle, the Tanzanian eagle.
F for faith. G for Gizmo our Maltese.
H for highchair. I, I think Bernie Kill knows
about style. J for Josh, K for Hemingway’s
“The Killers.” L for lug the corpse
over the grass and kick it into the river.
M is for maybe, N nothing, O oriole,
P put down that knife and let’s talk.
Q Queenie slammed the door and flew
down the stairs. R for runt,
S sound as in Long Island Sound, T
temptation, U a U-turn can get you a ticket.
V vagina, W words wound, X for Xavier
Cugat was a bandleader. Y you don’t know.
Z for zest, as in I wash with Zest soap.

21
Heebie-jeebies Love

We talked a black sound, Grady Chapman

of the Robins, singing I Love Paris,
a black sound, you knew it wasn’t Perry
Como. Little Richard black sound, Pat
Boone, how white can you get. Little Richard
one leg on the piano, banging, screaming
like he’s irate but he’s having fun so are
ones watching TV because it’s not like
what you’d see on Milton Berle, who was
a pretty cool guy in his own self. Pat Boone
book in his arm letter sweater say M, white
bucks white trellis open convertible door for
pony tailed Shirley. Little Richard screaming
off the walls, no, no, not out of control he’s
a showman with substance and not to take
anything from Pat, for kicks let’s happy
heavenly Little Richard album: April Love
What else did Pat? I think of Little Richard
white suit pomaded hair bangs a keyboard
like when I and thousands watch from
screens. Pat Boone even published a book,
Tips for kids to stay with well and out of
handcuffs.

22
River and Willow

I’ve come back to the weeping willow on the river bend,

to what was here before I was born.
I’ve brought no water.
For this river is the source of all water, though its brown.
The willow across the river,
the source of all green, makes me think of its opposite:
a crushed Pepsi can
on a cement stump in a parking lot behind a theater
one early night in March,
an image that stays with me here on the riverbank,
though I’ve long forgotten images on the theater screen
that night.
I took a black and white of the willow.
By the time I saw the crushed can on the cement stump
I’d lost the tree’s image,
which encompassed woods behind it, and river,
the part where the river curved, and back above it.

I’ve come back from a walk along a busy road,

which reminds me of a walk along a runway, uphill,
a runway for small planes,
on the hilltop an adobe house built by a pilot
in whose plane I flew,
years after seeing the crushed can on the cement stump
close to a brick wall that night, years ago.

23
Nocturnal Journey

Their nocturnal journey almost over,

the coyotes’ melodic yelps wake me at 5,
the Big Bend, in the distance the Christmas
Mountains. Yesterday I saw a ridge
where Javalinas had eaten the hearts of
low to the ground lechugillas.
Hiking Terlingua Creek I found a rock
I could see through: flat land for miles
dotted by sage and bladed plants,
not standing cacti but low to the ground,
oval-shaped, leaves like pillows to beautify
a sofa. Needles struck to my thumb and
index finger. Both bled a while. Later
I felt a hardness, a soreness in my thumb
and thought poison but nothing to worry
about. Here, the beginning of March,
at dark the wind died. What trees are waist-
high have branches we turned to firewood.
I remember: mesas at sunset,
part red, part blond, the vein Jim found
in a rock wall in Terlingua,
moist mountain lion tracks and tracks of
deer above a badger hole. God forgot
to make badgers humble, Scotty said.
The ghost town’s stone walls of houses,
and above them the wedding’s guitar music.
The rabbits, roadrunners.
Jim and Scotty hurled stones across the Rio
Grande into Mexico, Pas Lajitas marsh
grass and scrub, the other side.

24
Hunger and Lust

In Rancho Grande a couple sits in a corner with a girl

who could be three or ten, I can’t tell. At first
I thought the man was carrying an infant.
The girl is in one of those infant car seats, partly covered in
blankets.

It’s in such moments I know what it means to be able to swab

sauce
from a plate with a flour tortilla, to be able to rise and walk out
the door,
everything, all the things you can do, since you can read this
and find a lover and sit in tree shade and kiss and maybe enjoy
doing that

the whole afternoon. The preciousness of life—opening a can

of peaches
with a can opener or filling the gas tank of whatever you might
drive,
any of it. People say, to be happy to live a full life, think of
others,
help others. To live a full life think of yourself, truly think of
yourself.

Be selfish. I care first about myself. The great mystery:

opening a can of peaches or kissing under an elm, or reading a
newspaper,
the really extraordinary lies in the ordinary. It’s only my
thought,
and not some absolute truth. Absolute truth: there’s a severely
retarded child

in a corner with two adults, presumably her parents. Absolute

truth
of our five senses. Nothing from the Bible, the Torah, the U.S.
Constitution.
Put yourself first, if others call you self-centered so what.
25
But my thought is if you’re truly putting yourself first,
respecting

yourself, loving yourself, you are, in a sense, the center of the

universe,
connected to where you are, to whom you are with, and what.
So, in saying, Nothing means more than my life you’re saying,
my daughter’s
life means more, also the girl wrapped in blankets in the corner.

26
Subway Vigilante

John Ramos and George Hollister

look at John’s poem “Subway Vigilante.”
“A white guy on a train surrounded,
closed in by four black youths.”

Why black and white? George asks.

Race is a key factor.

A different poem could have four white
youths surround a black guy.
This tragedy in New York City in 1984
is told by Charles Mraz.

“I fired my .38.”

Closed in he took out a gun and fired?

Five times. Then I voiced the shooter’s

thoughts. “This is easy,
this feels good. Don’t touch me, for five
dollars, my worth, my dignity.”

They asked for money?

Firing the .38 he was out of his mind.

No sane person firing a gun
at another person feels good.

“Don’t scare the shit out of me!

I fired again and again.
The last shot severed Burton’s spinal cord.”

“It could have been me.

I got up from the filthy train, escaped
and read about the man
who wasn’t going to take it anymore,
27
Charles Mraz. Then the public mood
changed. I was Lincoln Rockwell
and David Duke all in one monster.”

He goes back to the beginning.

“Doors slid open. Gangstas trudged in.

I looked up at a poster:
a man and woman hand in hand strolling
in a meadow ad for Salems.
A silver boombox blared “That Girl.”

“I’m not drooling, sitting by a window,

nor in prison, nor in church
kneeling in a pew praying God, forgive me. “

George says, I wouldn’t have had a gun.

Mraz weasels out of that evening

in the underground. Or tries to.
“Pretend I wasn’t sitting next to one of them.
How are you? Give me five dollars.”

John told George he wrote this last year.

28
How Amazing

Is the ignorance about the value

of animals.
The not knowing, not caring
not wanting to know,
not concerned in the least
is barbed wire amazing, rusty razor
shocking, mountain river astounding.

Animals—dogs, cats, birds, fish—to these

are nothing. Let’s feed the fish plastic,
let’s litter so the birds and squirrels choke.
We don’t see it, shopping at Shop Rite,
praying in our prayer houses, half asleep
or busy texting at desks in our college
classrooms.

Strays are as foreign as Martians.

Where they go, what they do does not
pertain to us non-enlightened ones
aspiring to be robots, apprentices of
conformity.

Animals—dog as hood ornament, that’s

okay. We can look, and think how cute.
Dog on display at the dog beauty pageant,
that’s okay, and dog in TV beer
commercial, use the dog to sell beer,
to sell dish detergent, to sell furniture,
razor blades, suits, and weed killer, that’s
okay, in that dogs and cats are
commodities like weed eaters, lawn
mowers, and boxes of cereals we consume
and throw away.

Too many strays? Round up a bunch.

Put them in a room and gas them, then
30
burn the corpses, then wait for the next
batch. Don’t just gas two or three, wait
to get a good batch, then gas them.
Someone will do it, while we shop at Walmart
for spaghetti, while we shop for bed-
sheets at Target or diddle our cell phones
at desks in classrooms or listen
to sermons in our worship houses.
Someone will gas the dogs and cats
and someone will burn the corpses.

After all, they’re only animals, so gassing

them, round them up and someone...it’s
like mowing the lawn, the grass
gets too high, you mow it; you get a good
number of these strays...it’s simple,
quick, efficient. Problem solved.

My pets? Nothing is more dear to me than

my fur babies, and when one of my fur
babies dies he or she crosses the rainbow
bridge; they don’t just die, they don’t just
go out of existence. My pets are my world,
at least part of my consumption-
conformity-obsessed world. But those
others, those other dogs and cats you see
roaming the parking lots and gardens, they
are a nuisance, they’re not My pets.

Pay someone to round them up, someone

to gas them, and someone to burn them.
Just get rid of them, they’re trash, no
better than a tissue slipped from a pocket
while someone is walking, a tissue that
litters the lawn.

31
Perfectly Healthy

Have you ever seen a perfectly healthy

dog or cat hoisted to a steel table and
given a needle in its neck and killed?
I haven’t. But someone has. Someone has
had to do it. Someone has had to take the
dead dog or cat from the steel table and
put it in a plastic bag and take it to a
freezer to let it lie there till it’s taken away
like the garbage it has been turned into by
human hands.

Sure, the dog or cat is scared being

placed on the steel table, it’s, say, terrified
but it’s not like a human being terrified.
Animals don’t feel, at least not the way we
humans feel. Animals are different. And
when someone puts a needle in its neck
and watches the life, if they care to look,
go out of its eyes, that’s not killing, not
murder. The formerly perfectly healthy
dog or cat was euthanized. It was put
down. That’s nice, a nice way of putting it,
euthanized, it sounds soothing. We put
the dog to sleep. Sure, there wasn’t
anything wrong with the dog, but there
were so many and how could we keep
them all, and no one wants them. We take
them one by one, hoist them, because
they are struggling, and put them to sleep,
put them down. We euthanize the
perfectly healthy dog or cat. Really, we did
the animal a favor. After all, death was
better than its living in a cage in a room
crowded with cages, where it would have
to be fed and cleaned up after, and we’d
have to pay someone to do that.
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Nothing wrong with killing the perfectly
healthy dog or cat. It’s the right thing to
do. After all, it’s not like killing a person.

You think, before they are taken to the

room and hoisted onto the steel table,
they know, they know what’s about to
happen, and even the other dogs and cats
in cages in the crowded room, as the dog
or cat is being taken away—they know,
too? You think they all bark and yelp and
whine in panic, out of fear?

Animals’ fear is different from human fear,

animals are different. They don’t feel,
really, at least not the way we feel. So
don’t upset yourself, it’s just an animal.
After it’s dead it’s not like the corpse of a
dead person; it’s garbage someone who’s
paid a decent wage will throw away.
Someone’s paid to stick the needle in the
neck, and someone else is paid to throw
out the garbage. That’s how it is, how it
should be. We can’t keep all these
perfectly healthy animals no one wants.
Who would want them? How could they in
any way better people’s lives?

33
Peter Mladinic lives in Hobbs, New Mexico. He was born and
raised in New Jersey and has lived in the Midwest and in the
South. He enlisted in the United States Navy and served for
four years. He received an MFA in Creative Writing from the
University of Arkansas in 1985, and taught English for thirty
years at New Mexico Junior College in Hobbs. He has edited
two books: Love, Death, and the Plains; and Ethnic Lea:
Southeast New Mexico Stories, which are available from the
Lea County Museum Press, as are three volumes of poetry: Lost
in Lea, Dressed for Winter, and Falling Awake in Lovington.
His most recent book, Knives on a Table was published by
Better Than Starbucks Publications in 2021. He is a past board
member of the Lea County Museum and a former president of
the Lea County Humane Society. An animal advocate, he
supports numerous animal rescue groups. Two of his main
concerns are to bring an end to the euthanizing of animals in
shelters and to help get animals in shelters adopted into caring
homes.