Poetry by Steve Deutsch

                            Alexander Rabb CC



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.





Urban Legend

Eddie told everyone
Benny lived in a fourth-floor walk up 
on Watkins Avenue,
in one of those crummy tenements
that only had heat in the summer--
but he later admitted
he’d never been there.

Jenny said
her cousin Ray told her
Benny lived with his mom and dad
and that the mom 
was old country,
spoke only Yiddish,
and took in sewing
to pay for luxuries—like rent.
“Desperately poor,”
She said
Ray said.

But, we all knew Ray 
made up stories
and, when pressed,
he’d only say, “How would I know?”

Marty was sure that Benny’s dad
led a horse-drawn cart
around the cobbled streets 
of Brownsville.
selling rags and tin pots 
and sharpening knives--
“for future suicides,”
we’d joke,
and then remember Anna,
who had.

Looks just like him,
Marty insisted,
but the guy
was named Jesus
and came from San Juan,
and Benny was
as Jewish as Solomon.

Benny would come by midweek
dressed in what must have been
his dad’s cast-offs
and black high-top sneakers 
that might have been new
twenty years ago.

He’d join us for basketball--
taking the court
with a winning smile,
though he dribbled
like he thought the ball
was radioactive
and he might—god forbid--
have to pick it up.

Other days,
Ricky assured us with great authority,
Benny ran a floating craps game
in a school yard
somewhere 
in East New York.

But Ricky had no idea
why someone needed
to run a craps game.
And what did “floating”
mean anyway--
Hucklebenny on a raft
on the East River?

Benny could talk
you inside out
and seemed to know
all there was to know
about everything.
It was a bit of a challenge--
even for those of us 
who went to class
hoping to learn what Thomas Jefferson
High School had to teach, 
and Davy might say,
“Let’s see what he knows
about the Spanish Civil War,”
and just like that Benny
would take you to Barcelona
to the aroma of saffron and garlic 
and the sound of the ocean
breaking the news
of the death of the Republic.

But what Benny knew best
was baseball.
ERAs and Batting Averages
and who would play who 
two weeks from Wednesday--
and yes, he made a little book,
and yes, he made a little money--
but no one begrudged him that.

I pictured him 
the next Mel Allen
but they drafted him
and sent him to Nam
with the rest of the kids
from Watkins and Thatford,
Chester and Bristol.
And some came back--
older and odder,
and as doomed as that Spanish Republic,
but Benny never did.

​

Steve Deutsch lives in State College, PA. His recent publications have or will appear in MacQueen’s,  8 Poems,  Louisiana Lit,  Burningword Literary Journal, The Write Launch, Biscuit Root Drive, Evening Street, Better Than Starbucks, Flashes of Brilliance, SanAntonio Review, Softblow, Mojave River Review, The Broadkill Review,  Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Panoply, Algebra of Owls, The Blue Nib, Thimble Magazine, The Muddy River Poetry Review, Ghost City Review, Borfski Press, Streetlight Press, Gravel, Literary Heist, Nixes Mate Review, Third Wednesday, Misfit Magazine, Word Fountain, Eclectica Magazine, The Drabble,  New Verse News and The Ekphrastic Review. He was nominated for Pushcart Prizes in 2017 and 2018. His Chapbook, “Perhaps You Can,” was published in 2019 by Kelsay Press. His full length book, Persistence of Memory will be published by Kelsay in September 2020.

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