by Richard Fein

Suddenly she got up and changed her seat
and sat down a distance away from me.
Discretely I sniffed myself, but I didn’t reek.
No oozing sore was on my face, and my mouth didn’t foam.
Neither had I mumbled mad prayers to some god or devil.
So what panicked her away from me?
She was no paradigm of pulchritude.
Her only attraction was her sudden change of seats.
But that made her a woman of mystery to me.
Then out of the dark the train entered my station,
I had to get off and I did.
Shadowy lady, I watched her through the window.
I saw her take a fleeting look at me,
then gone, never to see her again
as the train departed back into the dark tunnel.
Dark tunnel, my eyes loitered there,
and in the darkness visions of her floated
like stars after a blow on the head.


Richard Fein was a finalist in The 2004 New York Center for Book Arts Chapbook Competition. A chapbook of his poems was published by Parallel Press, University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has been published in many web and print journals such as Cordite, Cortland Review, Reed, Southern Review, Roanoke Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Mississippi Review, Paris/atlantic, Canadian Dimension, Black Swan Review, Exquisite Corpse, Foliate Oak, Morpo Review, Ken*Again, Oregon East, Southern Humanities Review, Morpo, Skyline, Touchstone, Windsor Review, Maverick, Parnassus Literary Review, Small Pond, Kansas Quarterly, Blue Unicorn, Exquisite Corpse, Terrain Aroostook Review, Compass Rose, Whiskey Island Review, Oregon East, Bad Penny Review, Constellations, and many, many others.