Hunger by John Grochalski

hunger

he’s eating something italian
out of a styrofoam container
over a blue garbage can that matches his coat
occasionally he lifts up a plastic jug to his mouth
and takes a big drink
of something cloudy that has noodles in it
he’s a discerning and somewhat picky eater
picking things out of the can
and discarding them at will
he likes the half-eaten bacon roll
but isn’t much for the unwrapped snickers
a few blocks ago i had a hunger that i couldn’t stand
and had to stop and split a butter bagel with my wife
after all, it had been ten hours since my last meal
and i wasn’t sure if i could hold out for lunch
he goes back to the italian food
which might be beef or chicken or, god forbid, veal
there’s not even an italian joint around this block
so someone had to go far to toss this out
but it’s his good luck that it was sitting there
on top of the half-drunk tub of coffee
and the barely touched pork fried rice
he has a beard like santa claus
that is wet from the cloudy noodle concoction
just like the front of his coat is soggy too
and as he chews he doesn’t even watch the crowd
glide by playing on cell phones
while i think for a single moment
about buying him a bagel and a coffee
but don’t because i’m a chicken
and i’d probably be doing it more for myself than him anyway
so i walk off and head into sunset park
so proud of my imaginary altruism
astounded that my stomach is still growling
taking pictures of that beautiful skyline of manhattan
there in the distance
looking fat enough to feed off of everyone
looking like a crystal or golden palace of plenty
depending on your position
and the tilt of the morning sun.

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), Starting with the Last Name Grochalski (Coleridge Street Books, 2014), and the novels, The Librarian (Six Gallery Press 2013), and Wine Clerk (Six Gallery Press 2016). Grochalski currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, where the garbage can smell like roses if you wish on it hard enough.

Comments

David Oliver Cranmer

Not Just Another Playlist Often, I sit in my swivel chair looking out the window, while jazz, country, or rock music plays. This pleasure goes on for many hours a mystic trance of sorts streaming—the glue maintaining my soul. I turn the best songs into playlists (once we called them mix tapes) puzzling over the perfect order. Does Satchmo’s “What a Wonderful World” kick off my latest list or make it the big soulful closer? And does “Mack the Knife” go higher in the set than “Summertime?” That’s an Ella Fitzgerald duet! “Foolishness? No, it’s not” whether you are climbing a tree to count all the leaves or tapping to beats. These are the joys that bring inner peace and balance (to a cold universe) lifting spirits skyward. David Oliver Cranmer ’s poems, short stories, articles, and essays have appeared in publications such as Punk Noir Magazine , The Five-Two: Crime Poetry Weekly , Needle: A Magazine of Noir , LitReactor , Macmillan’s Criminal Element , and

Corey Mesler

I think of you tonight, my Beats I think of you tonight, my Beats, and I am grateful. I walked the narrow lanes of Academia and never felt at home. There were men and women in the flowerbeds, their heads full of theorems and poems. There were teachers who could lift their own weight in prose. I was lonely. I was too loose. I was a lad from the faraway country of Smarting. But I had you as so many before me. I had you and I knew secret things. I could count on you like a percussion. And now I want to say: I love you. If not for you, what? I want to say. If Allen Ginsberg did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. COREY MESLER has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Five Points, Good Poems American Places, and New Stories from the South . He has published over 25 books of fiction and poetry. His newest novel, The Diminishment of Charlie Cain , is from Livingston Press. He also wrote the screenplay for We Go On , which won The Me

Amy Holman

My mother made herself the deer with a broken leg We saw a deer through the pane into someone else’s yard. The leg moved like a tube sock pinned to the hip and half filled with sticks. I did not like to see it suffer, either. She was upset —my mother —that no one helped the doe. Was it a mother, too? As if we were the first to observe the scene. We weren’t. All had been told to let her be. My mother had suffered a destruction of the self, a divorce, and no one cared. That wasn’t true. We were grown, on our own. I agree it was hard. Yet in those moments of a cold November day, we watched a doe, disabled and enduring, walk across a yard and eat a hedge. I wish she could have seen it like that. Amy Holman is the author of the collection, Wrens Fly Through This Opened Window (Somondoco Press, 2010) and four chapbooks, including the prizewinning Wait for Me, I’m Gone (Dream Horse Press, 2005). Recent poems have been in or accepted by Blueline,

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