Below Deck

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Steve Gerson

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I am an American, because my grandparents suffered through a voyage below deck. They roiled
in tempests. They ate grub-infested cornmeal. They traveled without an itinerary other than any
land would improve their prior status as second-class field workers digging potatoes out of rocks.
What would await them? Open arms or thrown epithets, hope or hunger, an America the beacon
or shores lashed by waves of hate and distrust? They arrived. They struggled. They thrived. I was
born into the country they helped to build, one meriting their dreams. I take my democracy for
granted, the democracy they achieved by rising from below deck.

                    Seagulls seek updraft
                    to rise above turbulence.
                    Wings reach horizons.

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Steve Gerson writes poetry and flash about life’s dissonance. He has published in CafeLit, Panoplyzine, Crack the Spine, Decadent Review, Vermilion, In Parentheses, Wingless Dreamer, Big Bend Literary Magazine, Coffin Bell, and more, plus his six chapbooks Once Planed Straight; Viral; And the Land Dreams Darkly; The 13th Floor: Step into Anxiety, What Is Isn’t, and There Is a Season.

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