Two poems by John Grochalski

gonna buy me a dog

my wife toasts our pints

and then says,

i worry about you if i die first
 

she’s thirty-six years-old and worries about this
 

why?
 

because you don’t talk to anyone but me

with me you talk my ear off

but with everyone else you clam up and sit there
 

this is true
 

i’ve never been to a dinner party

and i’m too afraid to knock on the janitor’s door
 

i worry that you’ll get a dog, she says

and that you’ll talk the poor thing to death
 

my wife has some beer
 

i’m basically worried about you

and some poor dog you’ll buy when i’m dead
 

i won’t buy a dog, i tell her
 

well, don’t say you’ll be too busy

with your twenty year-old girlfriend

because i’ve seen you around other women
 

if they aren’t bagging my groceries

there’s nothing between us, i say
 

i have some beer
 

you might be right, i tell her

maybe i will buy a dog just in case

i’ll get a german shepherd and name him hunter
 

that poor dog, my wife says
 

it could be good

me and hunter drunk walking the neighborhood

after a day with wine and beer

and movies
 

i’d play him the radio

all the great ones, i tell her

and we can sit there passing the time

listening to the masters
 

there’d be no need to talk

 

 

hell, i’d probably forget the sound

of my own voice, i say
 

my wife laughs

that animal will be deaf or crazy within in a year
 

probably

but then i think

i’m not gonna buy me a dog
 

i won’t have to
 

because without you, dear

i’ll howl so horribly every night

the dogs will come running to me by the dozens
 

and together

we’ll yelp sonnets for you
 

and aim them at the moon.
 

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

father sebastian
 

we all knew about father sebastian

could tell all there was about him

by the way he walked through the halls at school
 

his sing-song and joyful lisp during masses

and the way he waved his hands so carefree
 

some of us liked to go to him to confession

to see if father sebastian would try to look at us

over his shoulder

as we told him how many times we jerked off in a day
 

he always had a favorite amongst us

father sebastian ran the catholic youth organization

and loved being around the basketball team
 

he took a liking to my friend dave

paid dave money to clean the parish grounds and the gym
 

but dave got wise pretty quickly to father sebastian

he quit working and never said why although we all knew
 

especially when father sebastian started calling dave’s house

crying on the phone to his mother for almost an hour

so concerned about why dave no longer came around
 

eventually the diocese got wise to father sebastian too
 

they moved him from parish to parish

in typical catholic fashion

thinking that a change of scenery

would fix all that was hungering inside the man
 

but eventually even the moves couldn’t protect

those humble god fearers from father sebastian
 

and when the scandals become too public he drifted south
 

into florida and then into cuba

where he found some solace in the politics of the gay scene

his family’s money, and in the arms of a much younger man
 

a few years later when they found him dead in havana

strangled and pumped full of animal tranquilizers
 

everyone said that they knew something like this would happen

and that they were happy someone else got him

before he got to their kids
 

some news reports said

that father sebastian was into male prostitution and porn
 

others called him a cuban revolutionary
 

but in all of the parishes on sunday morning

no one said anything about father sebastian
 

no one even offered a prayer
 

the virginal priests stood at their pulpits

and told everyone how to act in order to get to heaven
 

and they all prayed for the usual bullshit

in typical catholic fashion too.

                                                          

Auhtor bio:
 

John Grochalski is the author of 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), and the forthcoming novel, The Librarian. Grochalski currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he constantly worries about the high cost of everything.