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. 

Steve Deutsch

is poetry editor of Centered Magazine and is poet in residence at the Bellefonte Art Museum. His work has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. His book Brooklyn (Evening Street Press, 2023) was awarded the Sinclair Poetry Prize in 2022. He is also author of four books published by Kelsay Press: a chapbook, Perhaps You Can (2019); and the full-length Persistence of Memory (September 2020); Going, Going, Gone (2021); and Slipping Away (2023).

His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Backchannels, Evening Street Review, Lothlorien, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Muddy River Poetry Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Poetica Review, Red Weather, Sangam, Santa Clara Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Sheila-na-gig, Silver Birch, The Drabble, and The Rush.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Three Poems by Steve Deutsch at The Write Launch (August 2023): “As Charged”; “My dad”; and “One Last Thing”

⚡ Poet, in Eclectica Magazine (Volume 22, Number 2, April/May 2018)

⚡ Flotilla, first published in the anthology Weatherings (FutureCycle Press 2015), and later posted on Sarah Russell Poetry (16 June 2018)