the white horse tavern has gone to the dogs By John Grochalski

you can’t even get inside

because there’s some fat lady 

blocking the door

eating a caesar salad

with dressing on her chin

tourists crowd the rest of it

with their tourist faces and tourist smiles

outside coeds from nyu

sit a picnic tables

drinking mimosas and vaping

eating something called smash burgers

in the cool spring breeze

jesus christ

this used to be a longshoreman’s bar

but now they croque madame

like they’re from france or something

the white horse tavern

has official gone to the dogs

jack kerouac can finally go home

and dylan thomas

can keep spinning in his grave

because money talks here now

and bullshit has to go and find himself 

another place to get a drink.

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.