Stevie's Law

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.

My poem, Beyond Wealth, was published today by OneArt. Here is the poem:

Beyond Wealth

On the deserted boardwalk

at Coney Island,

just before a storm roared in,

gray-black clouds peeked

over the Ferris Wheel—

waves strained the imagination.

On our Sunday holidays,

my dad would eat

clams on the half shell.

He seemed so delighted

by his little routine—

lemon, hot sauce, slurp.

The rest of us

would stuff ourselves

on Nathan’s Famous hot dogs—

the best in the world.

Later we’d sit on the beach

with a thousand others

and bake.

How mom and dad loved

that they owned the sun

and the sand.

They’d never owned

anything as majestic.

Dad called

the subway home from the beach

the Calamine Express—

filled with working stiffs

heading home

for Sunday dinner,

sun-burnt children in tow.

Some would swell the colleges.

Some would patrol the rice paddies.

Some still remember

the sun and the sand.

My Poem, Last Winter is in Issue 30 of MacQueen’s Quinterly. Here is the poem:

Last Winter

False spring today.

A mild breeze fans

the bare trees

as if in rehearsal.

I walk along the riverbank

lost in thought.

It has been a hard winter—

like living inside an ice cave

with a constant gray sky that lodged

in my bones.

And for friends

on the edge,

a final fall

into that oblivion

where not a single

bird sings

and spring is always

a day away.

Here is the third of my published poems by The Write Launch:

Here is the third of my published poems by The Write Launch:

What the Body Remembers
It grew back straight and soft
with the texture of
mulberry silk.

Surreptitiously, I searched old pictures
to test my memory—
those orchestrated black
and whites of me at 2

or 3 or 4, with
that “say cheese” smile.
And I
had to admit

I once again had the hair
of a toddler. Memory
of my mother
brushing my cowlick

into obedience
came back
each time I glanced
at the mirror.

In this old house
hidden away somewhere
is a tuft of my toddler hair
under glass.

I search haphazardly,
but still I search—
this drawer, that box,
as if a modern Ponce de León