Poetry: Selections From John Grochalski

if you can’t stand the heat

 

mrs. mussolini

used to pump the heat in her classroom

 

at the sign of

fall’s first frost

 

she’d pump it until it was full blast

 

ten minutes into it

kids would be touching their sweating faces

drooping their heads onto desks

 

forgetting subjects and predicates

 

kids would ask for the hall pass

just to get a break

 

mrs. mussolini dressed us down

for always being so lethargic in class

 

she’d point at the dewy windows and say

you know, you could be out there in the cold

 

then she’d tell us how lucky we were

to be so cozy inside

 

checking the heat

to see if she could pump it some more

 

while we suffocated

in her sticky hellscape

 

barely surviving the hour

until the bell rang

 

and we made it safely

to the cafeteria

 

shaky and confused

 

like torture victims

suddenly set free.

microwaved life

 

we don’t question

the system we’ve surrendered

our lives to

 

instead

 

we talk about

weekends

holidays

vacations

work gossip

and retirement instead

 

we eat bland

half-warm

microwaved food

at our desks

 

surrounded

by pictures of loved ones

we hardly see

 

knickknacks

 

and all spiritual sayings

that we’ve printed up

 

just to keep sane.

the incredible hell

 

the incredible hell

was waking up at four-forty-five

in the morning

to the pitch black of my room

my brother still sleeping on his side

the demon-angel light

of the upstairs hallway blinding me

coming downstairs into the still living room

going outside into the cold

lugging in the bundle of morning papers

assembling them on the carpet

all of the misery and bliss of the world

on the front page

but i didn’t care

i wanted to be back in my bed

like the other thirteen-year-olds

instead of

walking around that neighborhood

before the sun rose

slinging papers into doorways

taped-up walkman playing michael jackson songs

hoping a car wouldn’t hit me

or a goddamned dog wouldn’t try to eat my soul

laying on the couch afterwards

trying to jerk-off to bikini-clad exercise women

on ESPN

before getting ready

to go to school

where bright-eyed and perky kids

sat upright in their chairs

waiting for the teacher’s instruction

jock boys with peach-fuzz moustaches

the nerds

the geeks

the girls growing tits

and how i hated them all

how i wanted to put my head down on the desk

and go to sleep

dream of a world

where i wasn’t up at four-forty-five in the morning

stupid, fat catholic school kid

that i was

who had no clue

that this was just the beginning

the start of the next thirty-five years

of incredible hells

paper jobs, mall jobs, library jobs,

desk jobs, warehouse jobs, retail jobs,

xerox jobs, pulling-staples-out-of-paper jobs,

garbage cleaning jobs, bookstore jobs,

so-called career jobs

so many layers of incredible hells

that it would make

a smart fucker like dante

blush.

broken oven, etc.

 

i think

my oven is left-leaning

 

lately, it refuses to work

 

and the fridge drips

from the freezer

 

in solidarity and protest

 

you can read about a lot of atrocities

from day to day

 

mass shootings and massive bombs

 

but you never read

about someone driven to the brink

by faulty plumbing

 

or the first whiff of a gas leak

 

america is hard enough

on a daily basis

 

without having to deal with another

broken appliance too

 

but the oven is broken

and the fridge leaks

and the blinds in the kitchen

are falling down again

 

it is 95-degrees here every day

 

and somewhere

someone

 

is buying another automatic weapon

walking into a school or your job

 

to cause more automatic death

so maybe fuck the broken oven

and maybe fuck america too.

blonde on blonde again

 

i used

to ride her ass

 

until the cows came home

 

smoked cigarettes afterwards

staring at her while she slept

 

thinking, i’ve been in that

golden blond

 

like her pussy was magic

some kind of hidden treasure

 

until she dumped me

 

for a guy she’d been fucking

behind my back

John Grochalski is the author of five poetry collections and three novels. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.