24
two poems by richard fein
ADAM AND EVE THE MORNING AFTER
THEIR VEGAS HONEYMOON
Did the world's first ex-virgins
realize they were mismatched newlyweds
the morning after their Las Vegas quickie wedding,
themselves sated and nude in bed
with the hotel shades open and the sun glaring
into their half-sober eyes and exposing
the once so seductive but now so boring sight of their sagging skin
and bemoaning the hard apple cider still clanging in their brains,
realizing that last night's dice toss came up snake eyes
as they find themselves burdened with the knowledge
that taking great impulsive risks sometime means taking a great loss,
and so now all their chips are gone and they have nothing
to stop being kicked out of this luxury joint
or to pay for a quickie divorce?
SKELETON KEY
Take off Clark Kent's glasses and assume Superman's X-ray eyes.
Kryptonite is a comic strip illusion so feel free to find a deeper vision.
Beneath black, white, red, yellow, brown, and perhaps even a tinge of blue,
the articulations of bones speak of grace
in the harmonized movements of humerus with femur,
of radius and ulna with tibia and fibula.
See how the slender phalanges uncurl from the metacarpals
when the hand reaches out to touch.
Be awed at the towering strength of the spine
which holds the skull far from the ground and closer to the cosmos.
Scan the arcade of the ribs, those bellows of breath.
Below is the pelvis which holds up the framework,
like a wide supporting hand..
And like the comic book hero
see beyond the clashing colors of skin
all the way to the ore of silvery bones running within,
which as much as ligaments and tendons binds us all
to the common vein of the body politic