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THE REQUIRED ACCOMPANYING COVER LETTER

by Richard Fein

Dear Editor:

I’m no ancient Hittite toady,

no genuflecting, groveling supplicant

hugging the ground and baring his back

to serve as a carpet for some parading potentate’s feet.

I lick nobody’s black boots,

unless it’s Mistress Olga’s

in her luscious House of Discipline.

Nor am I a fallen gladiator pleading for mercy

before the financial backer of the game,

the first editor,

the Roman progenitor of your professional title.

The arena may now be publishing,

but the contests are just as bloody.

Submit. Submit! Submit?

I should submit a manuscript so you could turn thumbs up or down?

Never! Not this pen-wielding Spartacus!

I don’t submit to anyone, and I’m sub to no one.

And so you nabob of the somewhat erudite,

high priest of the semiliterate,

Charon of the slush pile,

I’m not submitting to you.

But accept my

blessing

and offer up prayers of thanksgiving,

that from an industry jam-packed with jaded eyes

I deigned to pick yours

to behold my immortal scribbles.

*Previously published in Southern Review

KIDNAPED CHILD

by Richard Fein

Summer afternoon at the old neighborhood playground

and by happenstance or design we're at the same park,

same type of warm day, same few hours after work,

when fathers watch their sons play at twilight.

My son races away from me,

as I did from my father so long ago.

He's running up the slides from the wrong end.

He hangs from the monkey bars.

And so did I.

Then he, as I did, makes the seesaw

seesaw by walking up from one end to the other.

And then the sunset spell

when we’re both cowboy and Indian.

But too soon I must break my trance and call him back,

as my father called me back long ago.

Time to leave the park,

one child is here

but the other is missing—

no kidnaped—

I’m the kidnaper.

He’s safe but gone forever.

And the other child,

he’s by my side, for now—

but soon, too soon . . ..

*Previously published in Pearl

Richard Fein I was Finalist in The 2004 Center for Book Arts Chapbook Competition. I have been published in many web and print journals, such as Oregon East Southern Humanities Review, Touchstone, Windsor Review, Maverick,
Parnassus Literary Review, Small Pond, Kansas Quarterly, Blue Unicorn, Exquisite Corpse, and many others I also have an interest in digital photography and have published many of my photos.

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