One Poem by Mitchell Toews

Bouncing Baby Boy

The morning I was born

Doctor bobbled the ball

sending me ass over toes

spinning like a tiny

Orion sans belt

down to the concrete floor

of the delivery room

But I saved that otherfucker's

job

me

hanging there like a wet

eight-pound tether ball

of gore and grit and

pissed off raging fever red

baby

A one-string guitar

I pendulum

back and forth

describing an arc of such stunning

imperfection Nurse Rempel

yells "Holy shit!" in the pure wonder

of how my melon did not crack

open like a yellow-yoke

breakfast special

And I say holy shit back

and take a flying sonny-side-up

kick and catch that ham-handed

no-good receiver right in his

"Sack

of potatoes, I am not!" I scream

with defiance and the Nurse

laughs and reels me in

like pulling a full

pail up out of a deep well in the desert

And sure I had a double

hernia—what do you expect when

some half-drunk German who ran

the hell out of Hamburg only

to turn up on the Canadian prairies and

make me into a human

hand grenade except I

didn't—oh no I didn't—ex

plode

"He missed the pass!"

shouts Mom to the record keeper on high

she always did like sports you see

and so would I in time

calmness in the bedlam

and she decided then and there

that if I refused to die

maybe I was worth keeping around

And so it went with me

the karmic ball on a string

hit me I caution you 

and I come

back twice as fast

and oh no, if you drop me,

I'm gonna bounce like she taught me

Mitchell Toews left his advertising job in 2016 to devote himself full-time to writing. Since then, Mitch has placed 125 short stories in literary journals, anthologies, and contests. His debut book, published by At Bay Press of Winnipeg in 2023, is a collection of short stories titled "Pinching Zwieback." The linked stories high-step through the furrowed fields of Hartplatz, an imaginary prairie village where the inhabitants consider what to discard and what to keep as the world around them changes. A coming-of-age novel, set in the boreal forest of Manitoba, is underway. It's called "Mulholland and Hardbar" and one beta reader described it as "Fargo, with a Mennonite accent."