Another excerpt from B’KLYN

The following poem is another selection from Richard J. Fein’s latest collection, B’KLYN.

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.

Excerpt from B’KLYN

A small taste of the prodigious Richard J. Fein’s work. BHB has published multiple collections of poetry from Fein. The following poem is from his most recently published collection, B’KLYN. 

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.

B’KLYN

Richard Fein brings Brooklyn to life in this amazing collection. Fein draws upon his Jewish heritage and childhood memories to create an eclectic experience filled with both tradition and exploration. It touches on both the past and movement into the future with strains of Whitman and inspiring energy.

This upcoming collection is a must-read.

If “only the dead know Brooklyn”—then only the living can know theB’KLYN of Richard J. Fein: in poems that take us all around the boroughin despair and exultation. Love the heartbreaking and heartfelt poetry of Richard J. Fein!

—Ted Richer

Pre-order B’KLYN by Richard Fein