Joe and I Were Caught Smoking by Peter Mladinic

Photo Source: Picryl

Joe and I Were Caught Smoking

I am an “I was,” a day. The then of a wall,

the shelter of bushes I was sitting under

with Joe, smoking cigarettes. A lady

in a coat, with shopping bags, walked by.

“You won’t get to be a big football player

that way.” Joe said, “We don’t want to be

big football players, we want to be big

baseball players.” She didn’t hear him.

I remember what they said about smoking

stunting your growth, people like her.

“We want to be …” I laughed at his joke.

But doesn’t every person want to big,

in one of the shapes and sizes big comes in?

That’s what it is to have ambition.

I want to be a big person. Ten years ago

I didn’t, but now I want to live each day

as if it were my last. But wasn’t that true

when I lived in upstairs rooms in three

rooming houses, at different times, in one

neighborhood? Snow fell in late fall;

you couldn’t see the ground, only patches

here and there, till spring. If being big

is being good, I want to be a good liar.

Smoking didn’t stunt my growth, but age

took me down a notch; that’s true

for many, maybe even for most people.

I never saw Joe after grammar school,

but I heard he crossed a state line

with others to drink in bar in the mountains

and never made it back home. In the car

in my mind it’s night, Joe’s at the wheel.

A girl, riding shotgun, is the lone survivor.

Peter Mladinic's most recent book of poems, Maiden Rock, is available from UnCollected Press. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, United States.

If you would like to learn more about Peter, you can check out his website here.