Quills and Frills-7/12/2014 John Grochalski

Ally says:

Starting with the Last Name Grochalski, published by Coleridge Street Press, is the newest poetry collection by John Grochalski, author of the poetry collections The Noose Doesn't Get Any Looser After You Punch Out, and Glass City as well as the novel, The Librarian.

Here's a sample:

starting with the last name grochalski

starting with the last name 
grochalski

i could trace my lineage
down the bar

at sufak's round corner
on saturday afternoons in pittsburgh

planting roots in the linoleum floor
with grandfathers and uncles and a stray cousin or two

starting with their last names
at the other end

working my way back down the bar

beer and shots
gambling pools and stray packs of smokes

tracing the lineage of everything
that emptied generations

of family fortune 
into the rusty till



bug noir

sure enough
he was resting right there

underneath a table

right where the dame 
told me he'd be

lime green

a million legs
and a million eyes
looking back at me

trying to blend in

i knew the mug

had seen his type 
crawling across

a million walls
and a million floors

but this time
i had him cornered, see

i pulled out my piece

but then i thought better

i blew at him

sent him scurrying
across the tile

the dame
just looked at me

i knew what she expected

what all dames wanted

she wanted
blood and guts

her eyes looked hungry 
for murder

but i just winked at her

doffed my hat

killin's not my thing
sweetheart

i said

before walking away

back into 
the fog of night



inventing abstraction

she sits in the foyer
she says, you're just the man
i've been waiting for

i tell her that it feels like i've been dragged through glass

she hands me a twisted paperclip
says, take this

i tell her that i'm too old for acceptance

she leads me to a window that is open
with a gust of wind blowing in
and says, this has been driving me nuts

i tell her that the insane are closer to god in their way

she says, see if you can get that paper clip
to brace the window shut

and i tell her that there's no saving us now.

she says, a strong guy like you
should be able to jimmy-rig that window

so i tell her that i'm just no good anymore
i'm almost a month away from thirty-nine
and i've never made a dollar that didn't try to kill me
that i can't even get the neighbor across the street
to fix his house alarm

she says, a nice man like you can probably do anything

i tell her that i'm going to get drunk again today
that all those whiskey and wine bottles in the basement
are my cold sacrifices

but she says, if only you could get that paperclip in there 
then things would be so much better

and i think she probably 
doesn't read the newspapers

she says, there, like that
get that paperclip between those holes

and i try and i try and i try

i hand her back the twisted metal
and tell her that it's no use
and the world is full of broken windows

and broken people
with and without love

wind gusts and paperclips

some who understand what kandinsky was doing
when he had moscow by the balls

and the rest of us
who are just trying to get alone
with a quieter kind of death

John Grochalski aims straight for the heart of things. With equal measures of acid and awe, he lights out for territory originally assayed by the legendary Charles Bukowski. Roll down the windows, fire up the imagination, and pass the bottle: you're in for one helluva ride."

                                                                             -Don Wentworth, Editor, Lilliput Review

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John Grochalski has kept a daily (yes DAILY as in he writes a new poem for it EVERY SINGLE DAY) poetry blog since 2008 called Winedrunk Sidewalk.

And if you fashion yourself the lucky type, you can enter to win a copy of Starting With The Last Name Grochalski. 

Regardless, you should pick up a copy of Starting With the Last Name Grochalski. You won't be disappointed.