Many thanks to the editors at Word Fountain for nominating my poem, “The Year we all got Cancer,” for a Pushcart Prize.  Word Fountain, the Literary Magazine of the Osterhout Free Library (Wilkes-Barre, PA) is available in both print and on-line versions.  Here is a link to my poems (including audio).

https://wordfountain.net/2017/12/02/steve-deutsch-three-poems/

The Year We All Got Cancer

Winter stayed.
The April rain so cold
it left blisters of ice
on an earth
as scarred and pockmarked
as a landscape mired in war.

We waited through the freeze and thaw
for some sign from the recalcitrant earth–
anxiety growing with each passing day.
The sun was of little use,                                                                                  …