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UNDERGROUND VOICES: POETRY
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JOHN GROCHALSKI
Running Hoops the shine of the beer bottle off the light, and whitman looking down at me from a torn photo on the wall. so many great ghosts hanging there, so many of them that i've spent my adult life trying to catch up with. but it seems i always fall when i get close enough, or that i was never there to begin with. and then that's when i sit again, at the cold desk in this cold room without a name, turn on the machine, and start running, like a goddamned circus animal. the prettiest girl in the bar she had been taking his shit all night, the abuse and the words when i stepped in and told her she was the prettiest girl in the bar that night. and who knew if it was true, except i felt she needed, to hear it right then and there. i know that he didn't buy it because he made a scene with cigarettes and beer bottles, and then left soon after, not willing to deny or accept what i'd just said. after that, i left our table to play the jukebox, an old elvis song that my wife likes to say reminds her of that very joint we were in. i drank a beer and a shot of whisky alone at the bar, and watched the night turn into morning behind the smear of neon. then i came back to rejoin everyone, wondering who would say what next. John Grochalski is a published writer whose poetry has appeared in Avenue, The Lilliput Review, The New Yinzer, The Blue Collar Review, The Deep Cleveland Junkmail Oracle, The ARTvoice, Modern Drunkard Magazine, The American Dissident, Words-Myth, My Favorite Bullet, The Main Street Rag, and Thieves Jargon. His short fiction has appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and his column The Lost Yinzer appears quarterly in The New Yinzer. His book of poems The Noose Doesn't Get Any Looser After You Punch Out is coming out via Six Gallery Press in 2008. |
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© 2008 Underground Voices |
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