One Poem by Steve Deutsch

 

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.

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, Going, Going, Gone, and Slipping Away, were published by Kelsay. Brooklyn was awarded the Sinclair Poetry Prize from Evening Street Press. A new full length, Seven Mountains, was just published.

Two Poems by Bob McAfee

 

Scratch

 

Inspired by “Fever 103”   –   Sylvia Plath 

 

Pure evil. What does it mean? 

I itch like hell. 

My mind is as dull as the triple 

 

Bladed razor, old and rusty now, 

Languishing on the shelf, incapable 

Of cleaving clean 

 

The writhing rash, the skin, the skin. 

My cindered thighs.  

The calomined smell. 

 

Too hot to handle! 

Love, love, the heat waves roll 

From me like St. Helens’ ash. I might 

 

Begin St. Vitus’ dance, the throbbing reel, 

The flagellate strokes 

Lash my flesh. I cannot rise, 

 

But unbundle all my clothes, 

Cursing Satan’s wrath. 

My bath, 

 

Ice water welcoming my bulk, 

Accepts this ravished hulk,  

Steam evaporating into air. 

 

Devilish lobster! 

Radiation, burning bright, 

Could kill me in an hour. 

 

Torching the bodies of heretics 

Like Torquemada with kerosene. 

The skin. The skin. 

 

Darling, all night 

I have been swaddling in hydrocortisone. 

My sheets grow heavy as Old Nick’s kiss. 

 

Three days. Three nights. 

Water-basted, roasting chicken. 

Water, water makes me kvetch. 

 

I am too sore for anything involving touch. 

My body 

Hurts in ways known only to God. I am radium – 

 

My head a flame  

On Japanese paper, incendiary skin. 

I am infinitely apprehensive. 

 

Does not my heat astound you! And my light! 

All by myself I am a branding iron 

Glowing and glowing, flush on flesh. 

 

I think I may ascend, 

Expand to twice my size – 

Sparks flying from my cattle prods, I 

 

Am pure evil, 

Child of God, 

Attended by prednisone angels, 

 

By Hannibal Lecter, by Nurse Ratched, 

By whatever these red things mean! 

Not You, nor her 

 

Nor her, nor her 

(dissolving crystals, old swathes) 

To Paradise. 

 

Scratch!

 

 

She Paints

 

 

She speaks in colours now. 

She utters no disclaimers, herky jerking 

through the forest, palette loaded up and primed, 

working out the jungle jive, scaly sunburnt chin 

of strangled prose and tattooed skin. 

 

She paints the trees by paleful moonlight, 

leaves of mauve, tendrils trailing down like braids, 

twisted up like no one’s business, 

wearing gnomy, gnarly shades of blue, 

tangled up and tough as glue. 

 

She floats beyond my stretchy fingers, 

graspy green, flying on a hint of breeze, 

somersaulting through the forest, 

scratchy arms and bark-stained knees of brown, 

jangled up and backing down. 

 

She scatters colours mixed with raindrops, 

purple spindles, flailing through a prism’s glass, 

expurgating all her visions, 

tattered, splattered toes of grassy white, 

spangled up devoid of light. 

 

She coils around the trees at midnight, 

wracked and wraithed, remnants dripping to the ground, 

wrenching out the cold earth tones, 

bony shoulders round and grey, 

mangled up and tossed away.

Bob McAfee is a retired software consultant who lives with his wife near Boston. He has written eight books of poetry, mostly on Love, Aging, and the Natural World. For the last several years he has hosted a Wednesday night Zoom poetry workshop. 

His website, www.bobmcafee.com