sit in the backseat
for 7 ½ hours
while they argue
and i just don’t get it
i can’t find that much
to argue about
and i love to argue
so i sit there
and dream of london
while they fight
over their new house
and answering the phone
the way he swears at drivers
who cut him off
how fast he’s going
how slow she drives
i sit in the back
and dream of cans of beer
of shots of scotch
and herman melville
cursing myself
for being too cheap
to take a plane
while they prattle
on about taxes
and paying healthcare costs
for the poor
and their neighbors
or who forgot to take out the trash
who’s going to shovel snow
once the new house is built
as i sit in the back
and think, christ, it’s only july
hot ugly july
that never seems to end
in the backseat of this car
going eighty-five miles per hour
through the state of pennsylvania
with nothing in my belly
but car exhaust
and suicidal thoughts
as they start in on each other again
over who’s under more pressure
at their job.
John A. Grochalski is a published writer whose poems have appeared in Avenue, Rusty Truck, Thieves Jargon, The Lilliput Review, The New Yinzer, The Blue Collar Review, The Deep Cleveland Junkmail Oracle, The ARTvoice, Modern Drunkard Magazine, The American Dissident, My Favorite Bullet, Words-Myth, The Main Street Rag, Underground Voices, Eclectica, Zygote In My Coffee, the Kennesaw Review, Octopus Beak Inc., Re)Verb, Clockwise Cat, Ink Sweat and Tears, Cherry Bleeds, Indite Circle, Lit Up, Gloom Cupboard, One Night Stanzas, American Tanka, Tattoo Highway, Lit Up, Ghoti, The Smoking Poet, Why Vandalism, The Delinquent, Delirio, The Chiron Review, Gutter Eloquence, Opium Poetry, Mad Swirl, Deep Tissue Magazine, The Loch Raven Review, The Hidden City Quarterly, Poetic Desperation, Red Fez, Eviscerator Heaven, Viral Cat, Leaf Garden, Alternative Reel, Poetry Super Highway, Calliope Nerve, Down in the Dirt, and the Orange Room Review. John’s short fiction has appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Fictionville, Bartleby Snopes, Retort, The Battered Suitcase, The Big Stupid Review, Pequin, The Legendary, The Moose & Pussy, and will be forthcoming in the anthology Living Room Handjob. His column The Lost Yinzer appears quarterly in The New Yinzer (www.newyinzer.com). John’s book of poems The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch Out is out via Six Gallery Press and his chapbook Meditations On Misery With Women is due on Tainted Coffee Press in the summer of 2010.
