Michael J. Grabell

Poetry

Michael J. Grabell grew up in a single-parent household, the son of a high school Spanish teacher and the grandson of an immigrant window washer from Ukraine. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Southwest Review, Best New Poets, Poetry Northwest, North American Review, and the Best American Poetry anthology among others. His chapbook, Macho Man, won the Finishing Line Press competition.

 

Why Are Things So Heavy in the Future?

It’s the weight of the guns and the lead in the bullets, the air between hold your breath and the gravity of minutes. It’s the lockdown lockout shelter in place, the thickness of a friend’s blood smeared on a child’s face to pretend she’s dead. It’s the weight of water crashing through levees and sequoias piled in ash. It’s the landmines sowed in the soil. It’s the weight of people doing nothing, of data centers filled with bullshit, of money based on bullshit. It’s the walls, the beautiful walls, we built. It’s not the sorrow. It’s the guilt.

“ I started writing this poem in the days after the school massacre in Uvalde. I had been working on a series of poems inspired by Maggie Smith to try to answer the innocently philosophical questions my kids throw at me from the backseat as we drive to their activities. We had just watched Back to the Future, and there’s this line where 1950s Doc is befuddled by the ‘80s slang ‘heavy.’ I thought it would be a funny question to try to answer, but then events overtook it, and the poem decided where it wanted to go. ”