January 2015
I am the author of a collection called The Secret History of New Jersey, where you can find some of these poems. I hold a degree in Journalism and a Master's in Library and Information Science from Rutgers University and work for Learning Ally, the nation's largest library of accessible educational material for people who are blind, visually impaired or have a learning difference such as dyslexia. For more visit www.tonygruenewald.com
First Class
My mother read between the mimeographed lines
of the letter sent home my first day of school;
though expectations were low,
they’d teach enough to know
how to sign away my soul
to the used car and mortgage;
and to please remember that I’d been bred
to be fed to the factories
and maybe marry the girl I met
behind the luncheonette counter after class;
I’d been blessed as nothing less than
assembly line fodder for Westinghouse, Revlon or Ford,
and that she would be grateful to them should they graduate me
to any institution more prestigious than
Rahway State
Prison.
Slow Children At Play
I wonder how they feel
Those children who come home to find
A sign that says
Slow Children At Play
Sprouted in front of their house.
I grew up in a time before
Self-esteem, before
Every Little League kid was
Trophied just for showing up
And know my arch-nemesis
Of a junior high gym teacher
Would have gleefully planted such a sign
In front of my house
To further mock my
Hormone-ravaged coordination.
He would have unveiled a sign
In front of the homes of each of my fellow
"Slow Boy Relay Team" members,
Holding press conferences to recount with relish
A litany of incidents demonstrating
Our appalling lack of athleticism.
And had we slow boys had access to such signs,
Each of us, clinging desperately to
Our lower rungs on the adolescent
Ladder of brutality would have
Planted them up and down Crescent Road,
Which for whatever reason seemed
To have more than its share of
A different kind of
Slow Children At Play.
Junior High School
Lost in the limbo
between being cute as buttons
and almost-adulthood,
we were separated,
for society's sake
Sequestered to a citadel
where schoolyard bullies
perfected new tortures
undetected by teachers
who wondered why
we weren't learning
while distracted
by the survival-of-the-cruelest
credo of gym class
and the terror of
the treacherous trip
to the smoke-soaked
boys room.
Decades later,
I drive by my fortress of torment
and wonder where
the guard towers
and barred windows
of my barbed wire-spiked memory
have gone.
©2015 Tony Gruenewald