Monday, March 1, 2021

Prose Poem: Grandpa Palazzolo.

 











It was a strange-looking device that

rattled down the street in my home town

back when I was a boy.

The old folks said it was from the devil.

But younger folk, those with open minds,

wanted to give it a chance --

so the strange thing was not run

out of town on a rail.

Instead, it was allowed to rumble

into the gazebo at City Park, 

where it hummed and hissed,

belching out a noxious black smoke

from the smokestack on top.


There was a Victrola horn on the side,

and as soon as the strange machine

was settled in the gazebo a harsh

mechanical voice began tickling 

our ears with balderdash and

innuendo.


My mother tried to keep me away from it,

but after dinner I snuck out my bedroom window

and went down to City Park to listen.


The machine told us that Mrs. Johnson,

a school teacher,

was secretly married to Nikita Khrushchev.

Our Town Hall was full of wormy 

catalpa seed pods,

to be sold to Mexico at a huge profit by

the mayor and city council.

Mr. Plummer, a veterinarian, licked

fire hydrants at night.

And my own dad, Fred Palazzolo Sr., 

hoarded matches.


"It's a dirty lie!" I yelled at the horn.

Then I threw a rock at the darn thing.

It went down the smokestack and

a minute later huge glowing red sparks

came flying out of the machine 

as it burst at the seams.

We all ran screaming back to our homes

before that dratted disinformation machine

exploded -- destroying our beautiful town

gazebo.


Don't ask me why, but all the prominent citizens

in town turned against the old folks

who had warned us in the first place

about the strange machine --

so those prominent citizens 

had every single solitary senior citizen

hauled off to the county poor farm.

That's why I never got to know my grandpa Palazzolo.

  

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