John Grochalski- Three Poems

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 novel, The Librarian (Six Gallery Press 2013).  Grochalski currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, in the section that doesn’t have the bike sharing program.

i was thinking about nashville

                        --for dan fante

i was thinking about nashville back in 2007

when i was looking for a word or two of wisdom in your emails

something that told me how to survive it

a little tip from the years of hard boozing and bad jobs

some tidbit from those novels and poems

that i sucked up like cheap wine

and you wrote atta boy, atta boy keep going

like blind faith would save and anoint us all

i was suffering in nashville in the grand opulent library

almost nine hundred miles from new york

traveling coast to coast on unsubsidized student loans

and the embers of a savings account

no job prospects no home a future on hold

over a decade out of college and my own sketchy resume

that made me look like a career drifter

but all you could ask me was if i had an editor

and, if so, could i give you his email

i was dying in the library trying to find a cheap hotel in memphis

writing shitty haikus next to budgetary woes

in notebooks that weren’t bound for glory

thinking about the honky tonks on broadway

full of blonde southern women shaking their asses

at men who weren’t concerned with poetic immortality

as i sucked down pabst blue ribbon at layla’s bluegrass inn

feeling less like a gin-pissing-raw-meat-dual-

carburetor-v8-son-of-a-bitch from pittsburgh

and more like a complete failure

with thousands of miles left to go

thinking that if you were still hustling for the word

how in the hell was i going to make it in the writing game?

i was thinking about nashville last night

half drunk on vodka when i heard about you being gone

another shooting star  another outlaw

no longer spitting raw juice on this scorched earth

guts and blood and brain turned into dust

i was thinking about nashville

how bright light builds only to fade away

oh, dan, i think that i was thinking about you.     

my old man burned a cigarette to its nub

as i walked around the living room

locking windows and doors

turning down the blaring tv that echoed

in the small duplex we lived in

the tv that always kept me awake

twelve years old and fears of insomnia

of hypochondria of that old catholic

if i should die before i wake

of kids at school calling me fat of girls

laughing at me or burglars prowling

my neighborhood fears of any creaking

thumping rumbling vibrating noise of

my mother working the late shift

in summers of news exposés that

told you what happened to women

in parking lots working the late shift

fears of cheap third-rate horror cinema

that played on pay cable that i watched

because i couldn’t fall asleep because

of those unlocked windows and doors

and that blaring television set

in that duplex where my old man

burned a cigarette to its nub

as he snored and snored and snored

on the living room couch with all the lights on

his faces as precious as a newborns

wrapped in the arms of a peaceful sleep

that always alluded me on nights like that.

the dealer

11 p.m.

i sit in the bar

of del’s restaurant

half-drunken third wheel

between calvin and this 17 year old girl

amanda

beer faced and vodka eyed

he wants her

i want her

but most likely

neither of us are gonna get her

saturday night feels forever

even in the empty belly of the new year

behind cold fogged bar glass

with an underage blonde

then she comes out of the kitchen

with an empty drink tray

portia

with her red hair and lip ring

the memory of her back tattoo

that she showed me back in the march rain

i wonder how long it’s been

at least since may

when i never showed up

at the bar she was working

portia and her boyfriend

portia leaving pittsburgh the next day

and i knew i had no shot

but there she is in a black and white del’s uniform

apron around her waist

giving the bartender drink orders

she sees me and smiles

she melts me

like she did those college months back

like a pale april sun

through a summer of women

an autumn of lonely heartbreak

of holy saturday nights

of bars i picked myself off the floor from

i never stopped wondering about her

about portia

hey you, she says

like hey you means forever between us

forever or something new

she calls me over

i come like a dog

she winks

she says, i was wondering what happened to you

i wonder when

i want to ask

about the boyfriend

about being back in pittsburgh

porita beats me to the punch

starts scrawling words and numbers

on her order pad

has me bend so she can write on my back

breath on my neck

portia tears off a sheet

hands it to me

immaculate holy phone number

i want to hold up

to the light like a treasure

my new year’s resolution

she says

we’re dealing on the side now

so…you know

winks and leaves with a tray full of beer

i look at the paper

1/8 costs this

1/4 costs that

can’t even read the last two numbers

of her digits

but at least i’ve answered the boyfriend question

deflated

i stumble back to the bar

calvin

amanda

playing paper football and laughing

she looks at me sadly and says

all blonde-faced, all blue-eyed angel illegal

honey

you look

like you’ve seen

a ghost.