11/23/2016 Three Poems by John Grochalskibad luck spot one guy is drawing a flower crushing green and yellow chalk on the pavement watching him we walk through a chalk sign that says bad luck spot we have to go back, i tell my wife you have to walk through it backwards why? she asks to undo the curse, of course she says, when did you become so superstitious? when they found cancer in my thirty-seven year old wife’s breast, i tell her we stop walking we watch as the man crushes more chalk for his flower in the most basic sense he’s destroying something in order to create beauty in my way i’m trying to take a nightmare back i didn’t believe that could happen, i continue who in the hell knows what else i’m wrong about? jesus? unicorns? ghosts? compassionate conservatism? american exceptionalism? you really want me to walk backwards through that? my wife says we’ve enough bad luck for one lifetime, i say it’s time for the tides to turn my wife looks around union square is packed with the assorted mix of everyone who make me want to move away from and fall in love with new york city every day this is stupid, she says so is cancer, i tell her we walk back to the spot on the pavement some people are walking right through the bad luck spot and others are walking around it the guy drawing the flower takes a break to wipe the crushed chalk from off of his hands he’s watching everyone i wonder if he wrote this sign too i’m only doing this for you, my wife says then she starts walking backward through the bad luck spot laughing like a child with the sun behind her and i can feel the magic working as i stand there smiling counting all of our old blessings delivered by this alchemy at work charles bridge at times i try to hold you out of my heart you’re too heavy for it, baby at times i think of the years that have passed between us and then to save my composure i don’t believe it or not i like the simple things ice cream cold beer the sun in its early moments your hand as we cross the charles bridge fooling them all we’re unburdened. driving through pittsburgh in june heading back to the suburbs to my parent’s home from kris and anna’s place where there was beer and poet talk driving through pittsburgh in june you and i like we used to do all of the time when we lived there when it was home all of those many years ago three days before the doctors in brooklyn would find the cancer in your breast i wish maybe we’d taken it slower not been in such a hurry to go back to my parent’s maybe gone around to some of the old places that we used to hang out the streets that we’d filled with love and a lot of other things instead of me having you make wrong turns because i no longer really knew the city of my birth we could’ve had a late bite at that old chinese restaurant that we hated and loved so much lingered outside your old apartment the way i did right before our first date done something starry-eyed in the city where our romance bloomed then turned solid oh honeybee if only we had known ![]() 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. Comments are closed.
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