Stevie's Law

My poem, Oasis, was just published by the Green Silk Journal. Here is the poem:

Oasis

     by Steven Deutsch

Long before the specialty

coffee shops,

we congregated at Sam’s

corner candy store.

We brought our nickels

and dimes

for penny candy

and leafed through

the current Superman.

On days of good fortune

we’d sit at the counter

and sip our malteds—

nothing better.

Sam had two booths

with plasticized seats

for the serious customers.

You could get a burger,

dog, or bagel with a schmear.

And for the connoisseurs,

Sam would make you a grilled

cheese worthy of Woolworth’s.

It’s where dad

proposed to mom

and where they

stopped for Sunday coffee.

The shops disappeared

in the sixties.

I doubt if more than one

or two survive

in the whole Borough

of Brooklyn. I wish

I might find one—

have an egg cream

at the fountain

and leave with

a Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy.

My poem, the Art of the Deal, was just published by the New Verse News. Here is the poem:

My cousin Bobby
tells me
the ultra rich
 
are negotiating
for more sunshine
on their compounds.
 
He reasons
that will mean
less sunshine
 
for the rest of us.
“They also want
a full moon
 
every night of the year.”
Bobby’s the nicest guy,
but thinks 2+2 is advanced math.
 
He read about the sunlight
in several feeds
on the internet
 
and now he owns it.
I ask him
who they are negotiating with
 
and he gives me
his poor dumb cousin look.
I drive home past
 
what we know as “the castle on the hill,”
and it seems to me
the hill has gotten higher.
 
The sun sets at my house
at 7:41 tonight—
it’s supposed to set at eight.
 
And I have to wonder
what else they might
be bargaining for.

I have two poems published by The RavensPerch today. Here is the first:

My ancestors prayed
their faithful hearts out
in a little shul
in the Steppes.

Prayed to their god
of gods in a language
as old as the civilization
they hoped their prayers might heal.

And still it snowed.
Snow over the roof
and through a window
they could no longer close.

It covered the floor
and oaken benches
hiding the poverty of place.
Snow on the sacred scroll

they recited from memory.
They chanted and swayed
and shivered in the deadly cold.
They prayed through the icy winters,

never asking when the healing
might begin,
or for a sign from the heavens.
And still it snows.

My poem, Bibliosmia, is in the current issue of PA”s Poetic Voices. Here is the poem:

BIBLIOSMIA

That groggy Monday
morning
I headed downstairs to my library

to check a passage
from The Good Soldier
I had dreamt

of that night.
Halfway down
I remembered

my library had been
dismantled
and carried away

in custom cardboard cartons,
courtesy of U-Haul.
In the library

there was nothing
but empty shelves,
dust defining

the line of books missing
from a lifetime
of collecting.

Does anything say aged
as effectively as downsizing?
And yet, the scent

of library stayed—
that musty smell of old books.
I sat and closed my eyes.

Desperado

You better let
Somebody love you
Before it’s too late. The Eagles.

I heard you’re
working construction
in Wyoming,
my brother, my friend.

Living out of Dad’s
tattered suitcase
in some crappy motel
off Interstate 80–

the highway to heaven.
I suppose you’ll do what damage
you can there
and leave.

Sis often says
you are four parts charm
and one part cruelty.
How the women

loved you.
I don’t suppose
your next stop
will be home.

When I place a pebble
on mom and dad’s grave,
I always say it’s from you—
but I suspect they know better.

The misery you caused us
has mostly moved on
to a new generation—
a gift for the ages.

———-

My Older Brother

I am the outlaw’s brother
consigned to lead the pack mules
and watch the great train robberies
from a rise
half a mile behind the gang.

I am the younger brother
allowed to ride a tricycle
around a single city block.
When my brother helps me cross
the street, we don’t tell mom or dad.

At night I bed the horses.
light the fire, cook the meat.
Over coffee, the outlaws play
the music of the trail
as lonesome as an arctic moon.

I hear of my brother’s exploits
through the family’s worried whispers.
I know it’s bad when they switch to Yiddish,
or when some teenage ogres
wait for him with switchblades.

My brother and I watch Westerns
I like The Cisco Kid best.
I know I’ll never be Cisco
but perhaps I’ll grow up to be Pancho,
saddling Diablo and Loco, so we may ride
and ride and ride.

_______

My poem, Love Steve, was just published by The Green Silk Journal. Here is the poem:

Love, Steve

That old photo
took my breath away.
How had I misplaced
the memory?
Did you?

It was
forty years ago.
The gentlest June—
the sea, the sand, the sun
on a tiny island

off the coast of Maine,
where the whole clan
stayed in a ramshackle
shack with uncertain plumbing
that must have slept a dozen.

Remember how it leaned away
from the sea and cackled
like a coven of witches
whenever the wind blew?
What a history it must have had.

Rooms added
so haphazardly
to the two-room shell
we learned to sleep
wherever we flopped.

Two weeks at end of semester
and everyone came.
We ate spaghetti
and the local catch.
Drank cheap Chianti

out of the bottle,
and talked all night
about what would be.
I thought I would love you
all forever. Didn’t you?

My poem, Graveyard, was just published by Persephone Literary Magazine. Here is the poem:

Graveyard

They laid it out on a rise
too steep for draft horses.
It’s a lonely spot—
but aren’t they all.

Headstones scattered
over the two acres
like chess pieces
placed by a child

who barely knows
the game.
The oldest
from 1828

is worn and blackened
by Pennsylvania winters.
But the graves
are well cared for.

We walk the paths
browse the headstones.
Names are repeated—
farm families,

I suppose,
from a few miles about,
and I wonder
what it was like

to live here
in the 1800s.
We find your name,
birth and death

on a metal marker
near the top of the rise
as if you too
were just visiting.

My poem, Boketto, was just published by the Orange Rose Lit Magazine. Here is the poem:

Boketto

Sleepless once again
I use
the Sturgeon Moon

to pick my way
through a landscape,
strewn with boulders

that overlooks the sea.
I head for one called Poseidon’s Throne
so I might rule the waves,

but I’ve caught the sea
at turn of tide
and for a short while

time stands still,
and I stare
at nothing at all.

My poem, After, was just published by Burningword Literary Journal. Here is the poems.

After,

we took
the long way
home.

As if such
a simple act
might flummox fate.

We are
a good people.
We bury our dead

and help
the maimed
to cross the road.

Yet the image
persists.
One careless step

along
the poorly
cobbled avenue,

and Atropos
snips
the thread.

Snow this morning.
Flakes as big
as oak leaves flutter
in the eddying air,
as if their appointment
with the ground
might wait.

I watch them
from a window
that overlooks
a small porch
heavy with
garden tools—
artifacts

from a forgotten season.
I sip a third cup,
warm in the warm house
and curl up
in my easy chair—
looking no farther ahead
than lunch.