I had two poems published today by Anti-Heroin Chic. Here is the first:
Captain Jack

I almost passed him by–
so folded into himself
he looked more turtle
than seven year old boy.

I had wandered over cautiously–
fascinated by the
verbal fistfight
rattling his second story windows.

“Captain Jack is home,”
I thought.
It’s what we called
that tight little man

who sported
a pencil mustache
and a mermaid tattoo
on each arm.

He was Navy Shore Patrol,
and Mom told me
I was not to visit
when the Captain was home.

She did not issue many warnings.
It was, after all, Brooklyn
and she thought it best
I figure things out for myself.

My best friend, Joel,
did not want to talk just then.
He nursed the kind of wound
that would never really heal.

But, later that day
in the school yard
he told me his dad
the Captain

was teaching him to box.
And, assuming a Joe Louis stance,
he raised his boyish hands–
half-hiding his bludgeoned eye