TWO PIECES BY JOHN GROCHALSKI

contemplating my sugar bowl heart

that moment when she smiles and says
you remember, the good old days
when people used to borrow sugar
like in the 1980s or something
this young thing who can barely remember the 1980s
and me contemplating my sugar bowl heart
with that wintering decade of moves and parental arguments
three schools in three years and such loneliness
growing fat on hostess cakes, tv and lays potato chips
smiles back and says, yes, just like the good old days


pittsburgh like a postcard

full of wine and thai food
i ask you in november, 1997
what you’d like to do next
and you told me, whatever,
as long as it doesn’t involve you going one way
and me going the other
the instant when i knew loving you
would be a simple game of genius
played out in the first fall snow
that framed pittsburgh like a postcard.


About John Grochalski:
John Grochalski's poetry and prose has appeared in The Montucky Review, and several other online and print publications including: Red Fez, Rusty Truck, Outsider Writers Collective, Underground Voices, The Lilliput Review, The Main Street Rag, Zygote In My Coffee, The Camel Saloon, and Bartleby Snopes. John has published two books of poetry: The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch (Six Gallery Press) and Glass City (Low Ghost Press), and a novel, The Librarian is forthcoming. His chapbook In the Year of Everything Dying can be viewed via Camel Saloon’s Books on Blogs series (http://booksonblog26.blogspot.com/).

HUNGER

booze soaked
and tired

i sit at this machine
before sunrise

as the winter dies
with the dj calling
for more snow

my belly rumbles
with hunger

but there is nothing
to eat in this apartment

so i plod on

thinking there are worse
things in this world
than a rumbling stomach
and a 40% chance
of snow.


About John Grochalski:
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), and the forthcoming The Sun Causes Cancer.  Grochalski currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he constantly worries about the high cost of everything.