grape drink and snuff
once as a kid
i made jackson pollock
splatters of purple chunks
on the hot pavement
i made getting sick an art
walking home in a daze
under the blistering sun
throwing up
throwing up
the latch key kid of the avant garde
half a dozen cartons of grape juice
and a bottom lip full of mint-flavored snuff
for lunch
as the neighbor lady asked me if i was all right
and i wanted to tell her
that those free summer camp kids
who thought they had my fat boy number
those prince and princesses
of this tin-shack suburb
could never tell me that i wasn’t solid
that i didn’t live up to my potential
that i was art
as royal as they came
but instead
i spewed up my genius
in violet hues
all over the concrete again.
About the Author: John Grochalski is the author of the poetry collections, The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch Out (Six Gallery Press 2008), Glass City (Low Ghost Press, 2010), In The Year of Everything Dying (Camel Saloon, 2012), Starting with the Last Name Grochalski (Coleridge Street Books, 2014), and The Philosopher’s Ship (Alien Buddha Press, 2018). He is also the author of the novels, The Librarian (Six Gallery Press 2013), and Wine Clerk (Six Gallery Press 2016). Grochalski currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, in the part that voted for Trump, so may God have mercy on his soul.
More by John Grochalski:
Image Credit: “Childs’ rare flowers, vegetables, & fruits” (1902) Public Domain
As It Ought To Be 