Stevie's Law

I have three poems in the current issue of The Write Launch. Here is the first:

A Turn Around Town

I take the cobbled path through town
that I have walked for years.
The streets are for the wary—
ice strewn here and there
as if they had tired
of the nagging shovels.
The air still
with the silence of February.

I have lived here so many years
you’d think I’d have
a story to share
for every building, every empty lot,
but the town and I have changed,
and like most my age,
I mourn
the way it was.

I scan the scurrying passersby
between hat
and scarf, searching
for a familiar face,
but so many of those
I once knew are gone.
Fingertips and toes growing numb,
I turn and head for home.

I have a second poem in the Schuylkill Valley Journal. Here is the poem:

Sounding Off

Most days my life
is hijacked
by the cacophony

of everyday.
All those quiet
things I love—

like raking leaves,
shoveling snow,
or sitting

in the garden sun
communing
with the birds—

have been taken
in torment by power tools—
manned by an army

determined to work
from sunup to sundown
in the service of a greener lawn

or snow-free sidewalk.
Most days my garden
is noisier than the flight

deck of an aircraft carrier.
Inside is no better—
my appliances all beep

to inform me
of God-knows-what
and I’ve caught

the fridge dinging
just for the hell of it.
My phone and pad

and laptop
announce in synchrony
the arrival of critical information—

such as the whereabouts
of the Prince of East
Yahupits—with pings,

haptic lights,
and haughty trumpet calls—
so alien to the human senses

it confirms we are
not alone
in the Universe.

Today, I half buried
my internet devices
in my neighbor’s

sidewalk snow.
His snow blower launched them
and threw a blade.

After, I took my lawn chair
into the icy air
and sat silently in the snow.

I have two poems in the Schuylkill Valley Journal. Here is the first.

What I’ve Been Missing

It’s a two-parka morning.
Bare beech branches
shiver in the considerable wind.

Yet, I am out on my lawn chair
in the back yard,
head tilted to catch that first sliver

of sun as it clears the cloud line
and caresses my paper-pale face—
like the blessing of a long-absent father.

I’ve two poems in the current issue of Misfit Magazine. Here is the second:

My Sister’s Memoir

I bought the last copy
out of the display window
at the bookshop on the corner,
where your face had smiled at me
every time I passed
as if promising a conversation.

But our last conversation
was long ago—long
before the whole world
knew your name.
Such different paths
through the forest.

You had made a life,
rich and rewarding,
and I had made a muddle.
I sat on a bench off 5th
enjoying a rare April warmth
and began to read.

I wish I could tell you
what I expected—
to be the star of the early
chapters, I suppose. Called out
and praised—that’s the way it was—
wasn’t it?

But you lumped me
in with all the Toms, Dicks
and Harrys of our youth
in what was a very short chapter
without a single anecdote
of the hundreds of adventures

we shared.
If I look up
and crane my neck
I can just make out
your penthouse apartment.
Amazing views of both rivers

and all of NYC I have
to imagine, since I’ve never
been. I placed your book,
picture up, in a handy wire trash can,
and scratched around for subway fare
to take the N line back to Brooklyn.

I’ve two poems in the current issue of Misfit Magazine. Here is the first and a link to the issue.

Latkes

I hand grate
the potatoes and onions
though my friends
have switched to food processors.
My grandma always said
that without a bit of blood
the latkes hadn’t much taste.

Aside for a special dish or two,
grandma was no cook—
having more interest in professional
wrestling and divining the daily numbers.
Given a deck of cards, she could separate
you from your money faster
than you could say matzoh meal.

Latkes are best when piping hot.
My grandmother an impresario—
playing the sizzle-snap of the pan.
We would gather round the stove
like wolves that had found a rabbit,
and scarf the latkes down—
burnt fingers be damned.

Hunger pangs gone,
we retired to the dinner table.
A mound of latkes, sour cream,
and apple sauce
shared the spotlight
with grandma’s other masterpiece—
brisket, queen of comfort food.

http://misfitmagazine.net/archive/No-40/index.html

My poem, Looking for America, was made into a choral by the composer Marty Rokeach and recently performed (the choral was renamed Remembering We’re Are Alive). Here is the poem and the link to the performance:

Looking for America

Let us be
best friends
one last time—

roll out the old
Ford
and take

that trip
we so often
dreamed of

when young.
Head to
the west coast

on those two lane
roads that once
were America.

Remember
when we were
America too?

Fill that old
Ford with
chips and beer—

the radio set
to the “Nothing
but Oldies” Station,

loud enough
to remind us
we are still alive.

Swap lies
with the locals
in pubs on Main Street

and sample
the biscuits and bacon
in dozens of mom

and pop diners
in what was once
the heartland—

a thousand dots
on a tattered
gas station map

long ago
bypassed
and nearly forgotten.

And when
the Ford
throws a rod

in Kansas
or Colorado,
as of course

it must,
we can unfold
the aluminum

lawn chairs
and sit on the berm
to wait for the sunset.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bgnaeTdRu2r-FU6EIctbDQx1Twk4VznZ/view?usp=gmail

My grandmother liked nothing
better than to walk in the rain.
On days when most were calculating
how best to stay dry while getting from A to B
she would don her old gray raincoat
and even older brown umbrella
and walk a few miles down Church Avenue
past a hundred store fronts
to nowhere in particular.

She never wore a watch
and I often wondered
how she knew to turn back
or if she always would.
It would not have been that hard,
it seemed to me,
to find a better place to live.
I watched for her,
as if the watching were a magnet
to draw her back home.

I only walked with her once.
At first, I blabbered and struggled
to keep up—my stride
half of hers.
But I soon settled, realizing
the sound of the rain
didn’t need the accompaniment of my voice.
That very wet March Day
she took me into one of the corner candy stores
that dotted our path
for a burger and vanilla malt.
Grandma had tea with milk and sugar.
The trip back was half as long
and twice as quiet—in the best way
I could imagine.

Published today by the Bluebird Word

This first appeared in Word Fountain and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. A friend reminded me of its existence. It’s been that kind of year.

The Year We All Got Cancer

Winter stayed.
The April rain so cold
it left blisters of ice
on an earth
as scarred and pockmarked
as a landscape mired in war.

We waited through the freeze and thaw
for some sign from the recalcitrant earth–
anxiety growing with each passing day.
The sun was of little use, peeking indifferently
through the skeletal clouds,
as if late for an appointment
on another planet.

We had become
a shivering muddle–
a people resigned to winter,
when we woke one day
to wild things bursting.
Fields of dandelion
and mustard greens and,
in the most desolate spot of all,
a stand of wild asparagus.

My Poem, North Country, was just published in Issue 11 of Livina Press. Here is the poem

North Country

Inspired by the Bob Dylan song Girl from the North Country

fair
and winter white
with unblemished
snow to my hips
and a cold so fierce
it disfigures.

These are badlands.
The border between
here and somewhere
like home.
Houses hidden behind fences
barely visible above
the snow
and neighborless for miles.

I grew to be a man here—
where the wind hits
heavy on the borderline.
This place where summer comes to die.
And if in my mind, I cross the Great Divide
one last time, in a pickup truck
as down on its luck as I am,
the treacherous wind assures me
that a flame still burns.

But in the North Country,
even the marble
markers that dot
the graveyards
crumble in the wind.

My poem, Prized Possession, is up at Lothlorien Poetry Journal. Here is the poem:

Prized Possession

Yogi was short and fat
and prone to tears
when things
didn’t go his way.

At eleven
he was the first
of our gang
to get glasses.

We were friends
and not one of us
called him
four eyes.

Instead, we took
turns trying his spectacles
on— smudging the lenses
past visibility.

His parents were poor,
the glasses a stretch,
and they reminded him
constantly to be careful.

I was there when
Eddie passed him
the basketball
and Yogi turned

to catch it
with his face.
He broke his nose
and had two shiners,

but the glasses
hit the grass
and came
through intact.

I saw them today
in a display case outside his office
when I went
to pick up my new specs.