Peter M. Gordon

MOUTHPIECE

Uncle Mack built his practice
getting guilty clients acquitted.
“That’s the way our system works,”
he told me. “the worst criminal

deserves the best defense.” I knew
Uncle Mack was rich. Big house,
enormous lawn, hilly Westchester
suburb – Paradise compared to my

family’s Brooklyn apartment with
its air shaft, concrete yard. I was
too young to understand why Dad’s
shoe store couldn’t buy a palace

like his younger brother’s. Mack
concealed his belly bulge in tailored
tweed suits. He smelled like my
barbershop; even his nails shone.

I loved to read his name in the papers
every time he defended New York’s
most notorious mob heroes. I didn’t
know Mack made his fortune as a

bagman, carrying payments to cops,
judges, DAs. But the FBI knew.
After my uncle’s arrest I visited him
in his new Big House. His prison

greys gleamed. “Press ’em myself
in the laundry.” He grinned. “Did
a favor for a guy. That’s the way
our system works.” Mack turned

States’, sent his clients away, vanished.
Guys in the old neighborhood called
him ‘rat.’ But that’s the way our system
works. You look out for Number One.


Peter reads "Mouthpiece":



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Peter confesses: "I grew up in Brooklyn, where everyone knew who was connected, even if you weren't. Uncle Mack is an amalgam of a couple of criminal lawyers and relatives I knew."

PETER M. GORDON won the 2019 Thomas Burnett Swann Poetry Prize. He's had over 100 poems published by journals and web sites, along with collections Two Car Garage and Let's Play Two: Poems About Baseball. He teaches in Full Sail University's Film Production MFA program.