Michael Grinthal
THEY ARE CALLING YOU AND THIS IS WHAT THEY ARE SAYING 

In the unsolvable sun
Of a yellowing year
All of the newest tunes

Of tiredness are rolling
About in the blacked-out trucks
All of the yellowing trees

Are blue with an emptying
Outness (obviously
This means me

And my rapidly oxidizing
Friends) my family
Owned a yellow string

Of cars so long
Ago the memory
Is brown

An Opel
A Skylark and a Dart
It was easy

To spot them in parking lots
All of them wrecked
Except the Skylark

And the Dart
Marianne Moore
Supposedly invented

Several names for cars
Ford Motor Company politely
Did not build

The Pastfinder
The Thunder Anticipator
Pastelogram

The Yellowing Sclera
I made up most of those
My very yellow hat

Is gone
I must get out
There. If you strike the day

Down it will become
More powerful than you
Can possibly imagine

Michael Grinthal’s poems have appeared in Jubilat, The Los Angeles Review, Mudlark, Yes Poetry, Queen Mob’s Tea House, and other publications. He lives in Brooklyn, NY and has worked for twenty-four years as a community organizer and lawyer in the racial justice and tenants’ rights movements. He has also worked for ten years as a parent and forty-nine years as a child.

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