endless breadsticks and salad by John Grochalski

there are at least

half of a dozen kids

running around screaming

the woman next to me

sounds like she’s hacking up a lung

and the party of twelve

taking up the backroom

can’t seem to speak below

a deafening decibel

they all weigh at least four-hundred pounds

keep filling their mouths

with the endless breadsticks and salad

that this abomination of a restaurant

offers up as enticement to come here

it’s saturday night in strip mall america

and though we’ve all made

the conscious decision to be here

i feel like a fucking alien

the waitresses are all blonde

the waitresses are all named becky

i can’t seem to find my becky

to refill my glass of cheap, shitty chianti

every becky that goes by

i raise my eyebrows and then my glass

then think, that’s not her

or, shit, maybe it is

there’s nothing left to do but endure

think of nero murdering catholics in ancient rome

ponder my empty wine glass

and the ruination of native lands

as kids run and scream

and fat people scream and laugh

wait for becky to bring out

the burnt, lackluster entrée

that the menu tells me is italian food

order another cheap, shitty wine

watch as cars cruise up and down the boulevard

full of other obese, hungry families

looking for a different corporate trough

as the hacking woman

shoves breadstick after breadstick

into her purse

like she’ll never get another meal

like there isn’t another one of these wretched places

two blocks up

and one avenue over

in another strip mall

next to the exxon station

on the 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.