This was just published in January issue of Burningword Literary Journal (97). Here is the poem. It was written in four line stanzas, but my blog ignores spacing and I don’t know how to change it.

This was great fun to write. My mother and grandmother were great card players (oh, and me). My brother father not so good.

Cadge

I bet the four flush—

worth next to nothing

but looking to all like the key

to the kingdom of heaven.

You told me once

that poker

was half luck

and half bluff.

They had just

cleaned you out again

at the Friday night game

above the body shop on Sutter Avenue.

You and your six

unemployable friends—

passing a cheap bottle of rye

and shots at each other’s parentage,

in a room 

full of reefer

and the sweat 

of day labor.

You told me once

you had no luck—

having given it

all to me.

And I pictured a medallion

bestowed upon the younger brother—

no small burden

you’d hung around my neck—

as if the family’s fortune 

was riding on my narrow shoulders.

“What fortune?”

anyone who knew us might think to ask.

“But, you’ll never be a bluffer,

you told me,

for that you need a pair—

and in our family, I got them.”

Cold as cobra’s breath

I bet my four spades

and watched 

as the better hand folded.

You never were a judge of character—

a lifetime

of confusing 

friends and enemies.