dragons - John Grochalski

dragons

she wants a book on fairies
and wimpy kids

no, dragons, she tells me
as she chases me around the place

she’s been chasing me since we opened

books about monsters
books about mythology
books by james patterson written by other people
but still for kids

definitely books about dragons, she says
my kid likes to read

about dragons, i answer
but not matter-of-factly 

while i calculate that new york city
public school children
have forty-two days until they go back to school

i wonder if i’ll still be alive by then

well, she says
she folds her arm and extends a leg
and i pity the person who had to go home to this woman
who has the task of pleasuring her

do you or do you not have any books about dragons?

i don’t know anything about dragons, i tell her

oh, just like you didn’t know anything about monsters
or mythology
or who wrote the latest james patterson novel

is there anything that you do know? she says

i know that i wish i was a dragon
i don’t tell her

a big fire breathing mother with horns on my tail
and yellow teeth

and i’d like to fly in here and scorch everything 
including the books by patterson

then i’d like to pick that bitch up by her neck
and swallow her whole

before flying off into the overcast sky
burning the landscape as i go

but i’m not a dragon
i’m barely half-human by mid-week

and today it is one-hundred degrees out

by the weekend i’ll have my electric bill
my rent bill and my student loan bill

i’ll need to keep this job for the foreseeable future

so i say to her
what about magic?
i know a ton of books about magic.