Stevie's Law

I have two poems in the current issue of Hole in the Head Review. Here are the poems:

Vellichor

There was a time bookstores ran for blocks
along 4th Avenue—the air outside
seasoned with mildew and must.

Nowadays, you need a treasure map
to find one—yet I do, on a shabby side
street, next to dry cleaners

and across the alleyway
from a Chinese take-out.
Outside there’s a cart—

there is always a cart—stuffed
with paperbacks at 5 for a buck,
each by an author who struggled to find

just the right word. The owner
is ageless and wears a sweater
his grandmother might have knitted.

He is as unhappy to see me
as all those 4th Avenue book men
were so long ago.

Inside, it is as hushed as a church
at 3 AM and just as holy.
A floor and a half packed

with books of every description
struggling for notice on sagging shelves
and floor-to-ceiling stacks.

There is a basement
but no Charon to row you there.
I spend a happy hour

browsing. I buy nothing—
I rarely do. Truth is, I collect
these old shops like friends

collect stamps. Rickety rooms
of a million memories—
a million buried secrets.

What you told me

You told me it was a big
wide world and the road
outside our door
would take us anywhere.

We couldn’t have been
much older than ten
when you told me
you were ready

to pack a toothbrush
and head for Route 66.
You told me to expect
postcards from all

the places you might visit,
and I imagined a card
from Wyoming
showing you herding cattle

and branding calves,
six gun dangling from your hip
and a forty gallon hat
over your eyes and ears;

or one from Alaska
of you panning for gold
in an icy stream
and holding up a nugget the size

of your head. You told
me of Paris, Moscow
and Warsaw and I pictured
you supping Borscht

on the banks of the Vistula.
You told me of poverty,
famine, and war,
and I saw you leading

a calvary charge—saber
flashing as bright
as your smile—
or all in white, bringing

vaccine to the children
of Turkey or Argentina.
But it was 1953
and your mother told me

of polio,
iron lungs,
and how you would never
walk again

My poem, Spice of Life, published as part of the Spices and Seasonings Series, on Silver Birch Press. First published by Thimbleletter. Here is the poem:

Spice of Life
by Steve Deutsch

My dad was infinitely better
with a knife and fork
than with hammer and nails.
And though his
do-it-yourself skills
were never the wonder
of the Western world
his hamburgers were
the talk of Hopkinson Avenue.
He worked his magic
on a small hibachi
on the fire escape—
his secret spice mix
secure in an old Hellman’s jar.

Early each spring
he’d don his ragged Dodger’s cap
and his consecrated robe,
draw the shades,
and prepare a fresh batch.
It was quite a ceremony.
He’d recount each ingredient three times
as if a cantor
singsonging a prayer—
holding each spice jar
to the kitchen light with reverence—
then mix them all together
with a wooden spoon
that had been in the family
since the time of King David.
“Pure gold,” he’d assure me
with a wink.

He taught me everything I know
and even today I can’t be
trusted with tools.
I’m never asked
to fix a leak,
caulk a backsplash,
or even change a lightbulb.
But a fire in my fancy gas grill
is cause for the neighborhood
to rejoice and noisily
pray for leftovers.
“Hamburgers,” they murmur,
nudging one another
and applauding mightily
when I hold up
the legendary Hellman’s jar.

My poem, Memories, has just been published by MacQueens Quinterly. Here is the poem:

Memories

You have to train yourself,
for they are fading faster
than dime-store paint
in the Florida sun.

Surely, you know
what I mean.
How tightly your grandmother
would hold the cards

just dealt her.
How your mother’s right eye
would close each time
she smoked,

and how your father
would belt out
some silly song
just to celebrate sunshine

on a Brooklyn afternoon.
Remember how your brother
raced to rescue you—
a capeless superman,

taking the distance
between you and terror
like an Olympic sprinter.
A first smile

from the girl
you would marry,
and that last farewell
from an old friend.

It’s why we scribble
isn’t it—to hold
on to the leaves
of October

as they blow
back and forth
across the avenue
before the first snow.

I’ve three poems up on the Write Launch. Here are the poems:

As Charged
The jury found you guilty
in just an hour and fourteen minutes.
Long enough for bathroom breaks
and a single show of hands.
Your public defender
advised you to cop a plea,
but mom borrowed a suit and black shoes
and dressed you as an innocent man.
I remember the letters best—
years of writing back and forth.
I told you of my slowly changing
life and you told me stories
of ancient gods and heroes
confined to lonely islands.
So many lonely gods.
So many empty islands.
We learned last week
you weren’t coming home
again, though mom hoped
you might someday.
She kept your room as it was
and now can’t pass it by,
sits in your favorite chair
with thoughts I can only imagine.

My dad
had a two week retirement.
Just long enough to drive
the Packard to Deerfield Beach
and help unload the U-haul.
He’d worked since he was ten
and would have loved some time
to tell bad jokes and play
some serious pinochle,
but he and mom needed the money.
He would pack a thermos of coffee,
a couple of cheese sandwiches,
and a chunk of apple cake
and head out most nights
to his job as a watchman
at a development under construction.
Mom and the neighbors
took to calling him The Sheriff.
Dad was not courageous
Vowing to deal with thieves by asking,
“You guys need an extra pair of hands?”

One Last Thing
My key, burnished
for fifty years,
slips smoothly
from my hand,
as if it wished
to ask me
if I’m sure.
You would
often say
“if I had a dollar”
and I thought
of all the times
I had passed though this door
and how I might
spend my incredible wealth.
There is a last time
for everything
I suppose—
some day our sun
will explode
and earth will
become a cinder.
But we rarely
think of that.
We don’t live
on the precipice
of never again
until one day
we lock the door
and walk away.

My poem, In the Cards, is in the current issue of Sheila-Na-Gig. Here is the poem:

In The Cards

My grandmother read tea leaves in a storefront
on Belmont Avenue. Outside, pushcarts

lined both sides of the street,
selling thimbles and twine, potatoes and chickens.

She’d cradle a calloused hand to examine the lines
of life and grief and their storied intersections,

peer deep into the crystal for the recently lost
or long-departed to offer some small slice of hope.

Grandma liked to tell me she sweetened their lives
the way a small piece of flanken sweetened the borscht,

as we shared a pot of honeyed tea and slices of babka,
and a game of 500 Rummy she never, ever lost.

Syzygies

There was a full moon
the night you died.
You would have wanted that.

When we were 8
and 10, we snuck
down the fire escape

one night to walk
the length of Church Avenue.
From the first rise

we looked out
on the near
perfect alignment

of street lights.
The moon was full
and we told each other stories

of how the planets aligned
like streetlights
and the pull of gravity

animated the vampires
the werewolves and the creature
from the Black Lagoon.

You said you could see them—
crouched like ravenous tigers
on the streetlight stanchions.

But we were young
then and only afraid
of make believe.

*

Halloween

They came for candy
this evening from 6
to 8, as the city allows.
Their parents trailed

with flash lights, bottled water
and warm clothing.
Costumed for cute
they dangled decorated

bags or plastic
Jack-o-lanterns
to carry home
hermetically sealed chocolate candies.

In Brooklyn, we dressed
for combat, ready to do battle
with the feisty folks
in poorly lit tenement halls

that smelled of cabbage
and kippered herring.
Remember when old lady
Blocker baptized Pete

with a pot of boiling water
rather than part with a penny
sweet. Outside it was mayhem.
The older kids blowing

the covers off manholes
with cherry bombs—
screaming like banshees
on sugar highs

until someone got too close
and spent the evening
being stitched at Beth-el.
They lit things up—

my brother was the star
of the show
with dad’s zippo and a paper bag
of puppy poop.

Our parents ignored us—
preferring Sgt. Bilko on TV
to refereeing the goody wars.
But the candy was sweeter then—

as if it were stolen fruit.
As if we had earned the right
to ruin our teeth on jelly
beans and turkish taffy.

My poem, After Covid, is in the current issue of the Phoenix (Pfeiffer University). Here is the poem:

After Covid

I bought my mother a clock
with two fixed hands
and a face that said
“whatever.”

And “whatever”
became a catch
phrase we used
whenever.

A metaphor
for the pandemic years—
locked away and staring
at a clock

that might as well
have made the time up.
Today I listened
to a single

rivulet of water
drip from my front gutter
as my pulse
tried to synch

with the rhythmic
sound of single drops
beating the steps below.
There is a rhythm

to life
that eases our passage.
Those who never find it
we call mad.

Perhaps we are all mad now
scratching around like chickens
to recover a rhythm
that vanished with the virus.

My poem, Deadline, has just been published by Backchannels. Here is the poem:

Early sun surprises.
Eyes like ground glass
and my hand
asleep on the keyboard.

Remember the summer
before working papers
at your uncle’s
bungalow colony.

The murky lake
and an old woven basket
for a basketball hoop.
Bare chested

days that lasted
for weeks and
cares no more
worrisome

then a stoved
middle finger.
Ah, for a time machine—
I can’t help

thinking,
as I shake my hand
and rub my eyes.
Fedex at ten.

I’m very pleased to have my poem, Looking for America,” in the 2023 print issue of the Clackamas Literary Review. Here is the poem:

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.