It was the one story
my dad never told
even though his
greatest pleasure
was holding forth
at the dinner table—
a cigar in one hand,
forked morsel in the other.
Dad drove a Checker cab
the graveyard shift
in New York City.
A fleet car—
he could never afford
the medallion.
But to hear him tell it
his cab was the hottest property
in the early morning city—
attracting great names
like Vegas attracts high rollers.
Over the years, he’d driven
Spencer Tracy, Rock Hudson,
and all of the Rat Pack.
Marilyn once pecked his cheek
rather than pay her fare,
and he had to help the doorman at the Plaza
extract Mantle and Ford
from the back seat—
“drunk as skunks.”
Sinatra, he told us, never rode
with the same dame twice,
and Jackie Gleason
would exit with a flourish—
“And away we go.”
He’d tell us of the ordinary
people that hailed his taxi
at 4 AM
pleading their cases like bookies
hawking tout sheets at Belmont.
And the tips—
from nickels and dimes
to bank-fresh fifties.
We knew he made most
of it up—
but dad was true to a code.
There was a tiny bit of truth
in every tale.
But he never told
us why he came home that morning
in the middle of his shift,
with blood stains on his work
clothes. He chained smoked
Camels—as he tried to still
the shakes
with a few shots of basement rye
and the longest shower
the man had ever taken.
Steve Deutsch lives in State College, PA. Some of his recent publications have or will appear in Pirene’s Fountain, Evening Street Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Bookends Review, Waymark Literary, The Red Eft Review, Thimble, The Mark Review, Boston Literary Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, RavensPerch, MacQueen’s, 8 Poems, Louisiana Lit, Burning-word Literary Journal, Third Wednesday, Softblow, and the Muddy River Poetry Review. Steve was nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. His Chapbook, “Perhaps You Can,” was published in 2019 by Kelsay Press. His full length book, Persistence of Memory was published in 2020 by Kelsay. Steve’s third book of poetry, Going, Going, Gone, was just accepted for publication.