John Grochalski writes

cracks on the sidewalk

in america

there is money for endless war

money to put immigrants in detention forever

and keep kids in cages

money rolling over money rolling

from sea to shining sea

in the hands of greedy pigs

money flying over broken neighborhoods

at thirty-thousand feet

a gilded carbon imprint

money for alarms

for gated communities

so they don’t have to deal with the peasants

dark money to be made off of elections

lobbying dollars suffocating the constitution

money to keep nutbags

up to their stomachs in firearms and fat

but where’s the motherfucking coin

to fix this crack on the sidewalk?

the one that cost me ten bucks

when i tripped over it

and dropped my bottle of wine?

its blood-red bounty

swirling right into the sewer

and gone forever

where’s the money for that america?

because it sure as fuck

isn’t sitting here in my wallet.

 

Fat Tony -- Matt Groening

John Grochalski writes

as two boys kick a ripe tomato

down the garbage-strewn sidewalk

i wonder about what the hunger rates

in the united states of america are

surely, they’re pretty high

or the food bank would’ve stopped sending me mail

i feel shame over the uneaten salad

sitting there waiting to be thrown out

in my work refrigerator

the victim of two spontaneous slices of pizza

the thumbed nose at food i’m supposed to eat at forty-five

i stop to consider

which fruit and vegetable stand

those boys got the tomato from

which merchant lost at capitalism today

or decided to turn sustenance into sport

to appease two restless boys

i think maybe

i should be the adult here

in this scenario

pull the boys away from their fun

to tell them all about starving kids

in china

in ethiopia

in parts of brooklyn they’ll never see

tell them

back in my days we kicked real balls

but that would seem judgmental of me

or at the very least racist

and maybe somewhat xenophobic

and there’s enough of that

going around here these days

plus, you never know

whom you’re going to offend

what poverty of pocket or mind

that lead to kicking a tomato for sport

also there’s still the issue

of my own uneaten salad

all of the uneaten salads that i’ve spurned

then later scraped away in silent shame

left to rot away

in a mound of garbage

shipped somewhere upstate

guilts that have lasted me decades

culinary hypocrisies blasting like fireworks

over a glittering trash heap

on the fourth of july.

 

Cornucopia of Emptiness --  Chati Coronel