Poetry by John Grochalski

Michael Tapp CC


hate

bryant oliver
was the only black kid in my grade
back in the 1980s
when reagan was all the rage
in poor neighborhoods and in central america
reagan’s hate was a benevolent one
he fought a war on drugs
and put millions of dads and sons and brothers in jail
bryant was a basketball star and a football star
he didn’t like me
because of my friend, billy calvin
billy called bryant  nigger lips in class
he called him porch monkey
whispered it to him while we were learning u.s. history
billy said bryant ate watermelon
hog jogs and possum grits
billy had a lot of hate in him
which came from his old man
but he was learning at a young age to make it all his own
back then i never understood why bryant
didn’t beat the shit out of billy
he was popular and had a lot of jock friends
i never understood why he sat there and took it from him
with that steely look of hate that i’ll never forget
or why bryant transferred it to me on the playground
pushing me around
and calling me fat ass in front of all the pretty girls
as billy laughed and laughed
and got away with every single one of those words
but i think now maybe it’s because i never said anything
never told billy to shut his fat mouth
never told a teacher what was going on in the back of that classroom
and my silence looked like hate to bryant
an american institution bigger than any of those words
said back in those salad days of ronald reagan
when quiet insults flew like bombs over libya
and we didn’t learn a thing from our shared history
other than to learn how to hate
as if it were our only true curriculum
as if it were the american way.




black girl swinging

black girl swinging

alone
in the park

before eight in the morning

white dress
big headphones on

high
high as she’ll go

with a smile that won’t stop

as i sweaty from the heat
go running by

another shadow in the sun

past parked cars with violent bumper stickers
telling me who to vote for

this world just a blue marble

and thankfully
not a cop in sight.




the chicken

the brooklyn sun
is setting tonight
over another national embarrassment
and everyone on this bus
sounds like a computer
with the beeps and whooshes of their gadgets
except this one guy
sitting two seats away
bug-eyed and foaming at the mouth
singing into the white noise
of our artificial intelligence
then clucking like a chicken
CLUCK! CLUCK! CLUCK!
before howling like a wolf
ready to blow this whole country down
and threatening his new imaginary friend
as i put away a book that i won’t remember
and stare out the window
at the cop cars taking hostage
another garbage strewn block
watching their blue and red lights swirl
against the sunset and subway tracks
as they got some kids pressed up against
the wall of a closed bagel shop
spread eagle and looking scared
and i sigh too deeply at this
imagine myself awash true sea of tranquility
wading deep in a great and wondrous
something else.

​

Bio: John Grochalski is the author of The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch Out (Six Gallery Press 2008), Glass City (Low Ghost Press, 2010), In The Year of Everything Dying (Camel Saloon, 2012), Starting with the Last Name Grochalski (Coleridge Street Books, 2014), and the novels, The Librarian (Six Gallery Press 2013), and Wine Clerk (Six Gallery Press 2016).  Grochalski currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, where the garbage can smell like roses if you wish on it hard enough.
 

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