pills by John Grochalski

everyone my age

is on pills now

it’s either aging or the grave

they tell me

then they take their pills

i look at the wondrous asses

on twenty-year-old women

and realize that i’m almost 

thirty years older than them

it depresses me

twenty-year-old asses 

shouldn’t depress a man

i wonder if i should go

and see the doctor

find out

if there’s a pill 

i can take

for something

as tragic as that.

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.