In Clarence Brown’s book Needs, the author takes you into the world of heroin addiction. His is a beautiful story of a fictional cop, Brenda, an addict who is helped to recovery. There is never a dull moment in this short fiction. At 155 pages, it is not at all a time consuming read. In fact, you will likely have a very hard time putting it down after reading only the first couple of pages.

No details are spared in this novella. It can be, at times, shocking. The read in itself was its own reward, and you will be sad when the ride is over. I sure was. I would definitely recommend getting this book.

While you’re at the gorgeous Central Library, check out the street-level display windows. Fancy getting your own poetry shown there? They’re running a poetry contest through February 21, and the winner will also get their work published in the Little Patuxent Review and read at the next CityLit Festival. Not too shabby!

For starters, the central character is a female Baltimore City police detective who is also a heroin addict and an unwilling psychic. But it’s not just the story that makes this book great. It’s the great writing. Brown’s juggling of multiple voices and multiple points of view is breathtaking.

The book’ll be available directly from the distributor, itascabooks.com, in a day or so, as well as from major chains. One reader/writer/critic just emailed me that NEEDS is a “fail to read this at your own risk” book. Don’t take chances — read it!

Clarence Brown is seen here giving a reading from his upcoming debut novel, Needs.

Click here for more information on the position.

From the Diary of Yankev Rivlin

(Feb. 26, 1934)

How strange, growing up inLodz

or growing old here onBroome St.,

never having danced for joy—

yet last night, stamping home

after the Fred Astaire movie,

the only footprints my own,

I watched bulbs burning

under their snow-ribbed helmets

tilted rakishly from wind and wear, snow

tufting the numbered tags

on telephone poles, meringue-treated

cars deserting their models, curbs

softening to pavement, and

I could

romp in my boots anywhere.

50

if eskimos have 20 words
for snow
then lonely people must have 50 ways
to describe quiet:

plush absorbent silence
of the empty bed
expectant tin can echo of the telephone
not ringing
static fizz as electrons swarm
around the television just turned off

throaty purr of gravel
after the car’s gone past
hum of the sinister refrigerator
backlighting cartons
for a cancelled show

yawn of the cluttered closet
sweater sleeve lolling like a tongue
candle wax that stiffens as it forgets
the flame

harmonic vibrance of the cry
cut short by sudden waking
shift of rearrangement as pills
settle back into their jar
fading tom-tom of the heart
as it gives up
gives up again

The Patient

Lunar antlers sprout from ears,

droop, blacken, thicken, merge

into a cold zodiac roving

on my chest and back, followed

by two thumping fingers.

A chaste-white duster—

starched, creaseless, glossy,

its flat, crisp, linear pockets

like slits sealed into the cloth—

deploys, Indian file, four-eyed

buttons that light on me:

“A CATscan, EKG, carotid duplex.”

A punctured neck bells out

from a clipboard and a bulbous thumb

presses on a nub, and a point scurries

across a pad I never see,

and my gurney’s steered away

while I’m staring at the ceiling

panels’ systematic perforations

that change to random wormy nicks,

and slabs of fitted frosted glass

that change to ice tray grids

with their neon cubes—

and I’m delivered to an alcove

where a technician jiggles my bracelet,

my name purplish, stamped and smudged,

and I hear my blood gurgling on a screen.