you can’t go home again By John Grochalski

they call the place

the harp & fiddle 

but i still call it rooney’s

though i haven’t been here in a decade

until i got the itch again

there’s a gloss on the bar now

and seats with cushions

a row of tvs above us

playing sports and the carnage of war

a beer garden for the summer

and a trivia night on tuesdays too

they’ve raised the beer prices

three-dollars

to keep the riff-raff out

and now the decent people sit here in quiet

with their heads buried in the phones

as pop music plays

trying to find a sign of life in here is impossible

there’s no mona fucking anyone 

on the bathroom sink

no benny to go mad

because the bitch cut him again

there’s just the bartender

updating her instagram account

showing everyone her vacation photos

as i sit here nursing a beer

hating that damned thomas wolfe

for being so right.

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, where the garbage can smell like roses if you wish on it hard enough.