Mind Games Richard Fein Poetry

local_library Mind Games

by Richard Fein

Published in Issue No. 3 ~ April, 1996

Chess is unforgiving,
no bluffing, no blundering.
Everything is so above board.
Scrabble’s more human, even blunderers like me can score.
What’s even sweeter, I can bluff, or seem to.
Ai, rad, col, jonquil, even qaid, are real,
but fruitquixcel and yesteryam?
I can awe anyone the first time
and some more than once.
But not her. She unfortunately
has seen them all before,
and some I haven’t seen.
Under the light she’s sucking on her finger,
and hasn’t turned her blue eyes to me once.
Well, there’s always the luck of the draw;
not likely, she’s a hundred points ahead.
My move:
lust would block her bingo,
but she’s holding the remaining s and t.
My mind has drawn the figurative blank.
I’m hemmed in; the three minute timer has almost run.
I’m a gamesman tired of games.
I could play to the open u,
use my seven to spell Iloveyou.
But she’d challenge,
using three words violates the rules.

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Richard Fein had this to say about his poem: "The checkout girl in the poem is real. She's someone I flirted with a long time ago. Part of the writing process is storing disparate images in your brain and combining them in interesting ways. This poem is a synthesis of various experiences. The Elvis and UFO articles are also real, but were not simultaneous with my meeting with the girl."