richardfein

Richard Fien

THE KINETICS OF OUR KIND

It's about falling on your face.
A stumbling drunk and a ballerina possess the same graceless movement.
When moving forward their centers of gravity fall just ahead of their genitals.
We're all walking leaning towers of Pisa.
The fall of man, the fall of woman, all our falls are pending before us.
A waddling hippopotamus moves more smoothly, all quadrupeds do,
for their moving bodies are always squarely above their centers of gravity.
Yet we bipeds, slower than most, are winning the race,
with bigger and bigger steps.
But someday in our collective stride to the stars
our common center will thrust too far ahead of us
then over we'll go genitals first, with face to quickly follow.
Then even the legless worms will catch up

SMUDGE POTS

I first saw them when driving with dad,
those small, cast-iron black pots.
They kept fruit trees from freezing,
and here in the city they were dark-metal candles
lighting our way past road construction,
and keeping our car from falling into a ditch.
Dad was a good driver.
Even when he'd turn to me
and reminisce about his grandpa's Model T,
he never toppled a smudge pot.
But now I'm the driver,
and I went past the last smudge pot years ago.
Fewer and fewer can recall
the soot rising from those flickering orange flames,
for now those fiery beacons have become plastic reflectors.
Today I'm the driver and my son the passenger.
Already he wants to drive.
Soon he will,
but he won't remember smudge pots,
anymore than I remember Model T's.

BLOOD BROTHERHOOD

If He wanted blood, I gave him blood,
jealousy before a jealous God”
my brother the delegated shepherd,
the anointed butcher,
and for a butcher blood flows cheap.
I coaxed crops from the stubborn soil,
but at the altar our Father snubbed my sweet fruit.
So I gave Him salty blood instead,
the precious blood of His favorite,
Abel the unblemished lamb”
a proper gift for a hungry God.
And I gave another gift;
I gave brother no time to hate brother.
For in that killing field,
when blood streamed down his forehead and stung his eyes
and his lips were poised to ask me why.
I answered him with a last crushing blow.
I became a mad bull hopelessly charging
as Yahweh's favor was yanked from me
like a Matador's blood-red cape.

CLEANING HOUSE AND LEAVING

The attic must be broom-swept clean.
The house is no longer home;
title will pass at tomorrow's closing.
Mother would sweep the attic monthly,
though no one ever came up here
except for herself and those Martians,
whose pattering footsteps I'd hear
on my bedroom ceiling late at night.
Now this one last time the attic is being swept.
An uprising of mold makes my nose run and eyes tear.
I snivel like the cringing eight-year-old I once was,
lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling, and so terrified.
But I must clear everything out.
The rooms must be broom-swept clean
and rat poison strategically placed.
For you mom, for homemaker you.
What would the new owners think of us
if late at night across their bedroom ceiling they could hear
pattering Martian footsteps littering the attic floor.

THE GRAMMAR OF A PARTING "I DO"

She needs freedom more than I. She needs freedom more than me.
Both sentences doom our romance.
Both sentences are elliptical,
for in the first sentence a verb is missing
and in the second a wordless something is lacking.
In our union too much has remained unspoken.
Whenever something is missing there is mystery.
But the second sentence robs me of any such mystery
and leaves me as just an object of pity,
for it's she alone who is leaving for freedom
while I seek only her not leaving.
But the first sentence makes us both subjects
seeking the same object.
True, her need for freedom is greater than mine,
yet we both seek it in our own way.
When the missing verb is provided
the sentence reads "she needs freedom more than I do."
And with "I do" in the first sentence instead of "than me" in the second,
we both walk away seeking
a mysterious freedom we can't define.