day ONE HUNDRED and SIX

captain america strikes again

the last time grigory and i met

he put down his broom

and interrogated me about my life

then we had a serious conversation

about the direction of america

grigory said he didn’t like the kids

carrying all of these phones or tattoos on women

he said that people in america

are a lot dumber than they were

when he came here from russia thirty-five years ago

grigory said, why do you think this is?

i shrugged, i told him that it’s taken me

over forty years to know what i know about america

and most of it i don’t like

so i blamed cell phones and the internet too

and we sat there like two old philosophers

yesterday i saw grigory again

for the first time in months

he was pushing a mop through another hallway

that would be dirty again within an hour

he didn’t remember me or our conversation

usually when this happens

it gives me a small satisfaction

that i’m at least doing something right

but grigory stopped mopping long enough

to see what i had on my computer screen

it was a comic book web site

he said, how old are you? forty?

and you play games, yes?

let me guess, you don’t have children

yet you read kiddie books?

i really didn’t know what to say to this

i thought maybe i’d go into oligarchs and plutocrats

reality stars changing into women

corporations and candidates and all of the endless wars

something to jog grigory’s memory

of our time together as great western thinkers

but i had nothing

i had another bad actor dressed as batman on the screen

and captain america running through a field of fire

in movies expensive enough to end homelessness

feed children and fix the national debt

i said, grigory, it can’t be proust all of the time

then i laughed my biggest fourth of july sale laugh

as grigory shook his head at me and walked away

so disgusted that he left the mop.

-- John Grochalski