One Poem by Steve Deutsch

 

Erato

 

I searched the town

and finally found her 

at that ramshackle café.

 

with the tin roof

next to the boarded-up

train station.

 

It was teeming—

the rainy season just begun

and how anyone could stand

 

that racket was beyond

my ken—

but she sat at a counter

 

in the corner of the shack

muttering prompts 

into her cardboard 

 

coffee cup.

She looked like hell—

all resemblance 

 

to that lithe Greek goddess

drained by a million poets

complaining of writer’s block.

 

I thought to comfort her

and grab that cup,

but muses are fast as

 

lightning bolts. 

She fled through the roof

leaving her cup of golden

 

prompts—written in a Greek

so old only Zeus

could decipher it.

 

Steve Deutsch is poetry editor of Centered Magazine and is poet in residence at the Bellefonte Art Museum. Steve was nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. His Chapbook, Perhaps You Can, was published in 2019 by Kelsay Press. His full length books, Persistence of Memory and Going, Going, Gone, were published by Kelsay. Slipping Away was published this spring. Brooklyn was awarded the Sinclair Poetry Prize from Evening Street Press and has just been published.