Air Raid by Steve Deutsch

In Brooklyn,
in 1953, the air raid
sirens would wail
their warning once
or twice a week.

We would
dive under our desks,
assuming the half-inch
oak would protect us
from anything,

although the teachers
never assured us.
My brother assured me
my eyes would boil
in their sockets,

my charred skin
would peel
from my bones,
and no one
would know me from the skeletons

in the Museum of Natural History.
My parents said
that was silly talk,
but my brother told me
the commies had a missile

trained on the Empire
State Building
with a blast radius of 13 miles
and we were within the blast zone.
“Fortunately, he said, the bomb will incinerate us

before the blast blows us apart.
You’re toast,” he added,
taking a huge bite of the rye bread
that he had slathered
with half a stick of butter.

I couldn’t get the eyeballs
out of my mind,
and the day mom left me to shop,
the sirens wailed,
and I hid in the closet

covered in coats.
For the next month
or so, mom would tell friends
and relatives she found
me wailing louder

than any siren
could, and I might
be an instrument of Civil Defense.
70 years later, sirens still
make me close my eyes tighter than tight.



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. Steve's full-length books, Persistence of Memory, Going, Going, Gone, and Slipping Away, were also published by Kelsay Press. Another poetry collection, Brooklyn, was awarded the Sinclair Poetry Prize from Evening Street Press and his latest full-length book, Seven Mountains, was just published.