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Poetry || SubmissionsFive poems by Richard FeinIf you be meekas lambs among wolves,then be neither old nor young and always nudge toward the middle. Don't lower or raise your head too much. Beware the slightest trace of nonconformity. When the wolves finally lunge, and your companions make their liquid turns around rocks and grass tufts, turn as sharply as the others but not too sharply. Keep the pace, for there must be only one cadence of feet. When a herd brother or sister gets a fang in the throat, stop only when the others stop. Stop, but never mourn. Your kind has been diminished by one, but that is your good fortune. Graze and regain your strength, for after the buzzards have picked clean the leftovers the stalking hour will come again. But don't worry. Just keep moving. Never rest. And above all, always lose yourself within the herd.
Lost ConnectionsMy dad had no connections.He knew no captains of industry, just a few corporals, privates, sergeants, and one low-ranking officer, a buyer for Woolworth’s clothing store. My dad knew no artists except for my aunt, who once did my portrait, my face slightly off color and hinting of acromegaly. Modern art, he excused with a laugh. But I’ve never hung in a museum. My dad knew no literati, but he could do the Times crossword in thirty minutes in ink and without a dictionary. He always warned me with proverbial words of advice, that if I were to make it, it must be on my own. My dad did know one low pillar in the corporate heights. I was in the adjoining room when the buyer demanded a bribe for the contract. My dad couldn’t afford a new bike, when my birthday came later that year . I blurted out, “Why didn’t you just pay the guy?” If mom had ever known– the nagging, the nagging. My dad discovered that I knew, and stared blankly before turning to the window to face the distant sky, like he did just before he died years later, as I stood by his bedside. My dad knew that I never told, that I never told mom the truth. And sometimes when I sleep, I see him behind a spinning bicycle wheel, each spoke blurring his face, like my aunt’s brush smudged mine. No one knew of my dad’s honesty but me. No one knew that it cost far more than a bike, and my portrait will never hang on a museum wall.
Love poemOld anthology, fourth edition, not a rare book,binding almost gone, many loose pages, a dusty outline on the shelf when I first lift the book. One Cathy Brady owned it once sixty years ago, she dated it. Her signature is neat; her letters are smoothly curved with no sharp angles. I thumb through the pages. Every poem I'd bother to read again, she had already circled. Every line I might memorize, she had underlined. Were she twenty then she might yet be living, white hair, her hand shaky, but maybe her letters would still posses something of those gentle slopes. I bought the book for eighty cents.
Daytime leaseholdThe new tenant above him must be young, healthy, and female.Definitely a she, for through the ceiling he hears the hint of a high-pitched voice and the click of high heel shoes. And every six a.m. he hears the pounding of feet running in place, aerobics in time with soft disco. The music is indeed soft, but it’s early morning and the ceiling shakes. He could venture upstairs and ask her to please keep in shape more quietly. But then she’d open the door and he’d see her real face and not the one he imagines. She might even ask him in. Yesterday he heard her lock her front door just as he also was about to leave. Above him, high-heeled footsteps click-clacked to the elevator. But he waited for that elevator to pass. Someday they’ll wind up face to face, but not yet. For now, every morning above him, a redhead, blonde, brunette, Chinese female kickboxer, and African warrior princess, all hone their bodies with their sweat, as he stares at his ceiling and wakes from a dream then drifts into daydreams.
My father's lightsFootlights on the lawn kept the front steps safe at nightand lit the dark grass to almost green. Dad laid those lights out when I became old enough to stay out a few hours after dark. And in his artificial light every loose pebble could be seen, if I walked slowly to the front door. I tripped only once, when I was walking too fast and wasn’t looking. And for a long time afterwards when returning home, I would walk slowly up the steps, while closely tracking those lights. But time has brought a much stronger light. The grass turns bright green in the rising sun, and every renegade pebble is so blazingly obvious that I can run out the front door to the street almost without looking. Dad’s footlights are overwhelmed. They no longer light up my way. They only make the nearby grass blades cast the faintest shadow on the concrete steps. Now I’ve just closed the front door behind me. Between the street and me there are only ten footlights lining the steps. I remember to shut those lights, for it is morning. No one will turn them on again tonight. But once a long time ago, dad’s lights kept me from tripping, whenever the moon was new or the full moon shrouded by clouds. Richard Fein lives in Brooklyn. He has been published at Ariga since 1999.
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