June 2024
Karen Friedland
r.feinberg@rcn.com
r.feinberg@rcn.com
Editor's Note: These poems are published posthumously. Rich Feinberg, Karen's husband added this note:
"I had been gathering Karen's final manuscript into a collection that will hopefully be published later this year, by Červená Barva Press. She had just begun putting it together when she got too sick to continue. It will be titled Incurable, Inoperable, Untreatable. Verse-Virtual was on a spreadsheet of places she had hoped to submit poems to, so I thought I'd give it a shot."
Rich also said he wouldn't mind if anyone wanted to send a response or comment on the poems. His email address is the one on this page.
Bio Note: Once a nonprofit grant writer by trade, Karen’s books of poetry include Places That Are Gone, Tales from the Teacup Palace, and a posthumous third volume to be published in 2024. Karen lived in the West Roxbury neighborhood of Boston with her husband, two dogs and a cat. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in November 2021, two days before her 58th birthday, and died on April 14, 2024.
"I had been gathering Karen's final manuscript into a collection that will hopefully be published later this year, by Červená Barva Press. She had just begun putting it together when she got too sick to continue. It will be titled Incurable, Inoperable, Untreatable. Verse-Virtual was on a spreadsheet of places she had hoped to submit poems to, so I thought I'd give it a shot."
Rich also said he wouldn't mind if anyone wanted to send a response or comment on the poems. His email address is the one on this page.
Bio Note: Once a nonprofit grant writer by trade, Karen’s books of poetry include Places That Are Gone, Tales from the Teacup Palace, and a posthumous third volume to be published in 2024. Karen lived in the West Roxbury neighborhood of Boston with her husband, two dogs and a cat. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in November 2021, two days before her 58th birthday, and died on April 14, 2024.
Last Chemo, for Now
Summertime,
last chemo over for now,
and tradesmen outside my window
again do battle with old New England houses,
banging out rotting wood,
scraping, painting—
protecting against coming winter and decay,
much as surgeons and chemo nurses
tried their damnedest to do with me.
The sound of robins, children,
and haphazard, one-note wind chimes
float through an open window,
because the music of life is always playing.
Spent and exhausted,
I am still alive,
rapt, transfixed,
wondering what’s next.
I Want
to be human composted—loamy—
just throw me into the soil—
so I can be one with nature—
my deep, true love!
I want to live on inside
the good people whose paths I crossed
by lucky happenstance—
How fortunate I was to know them all!
I aim to be ecstatic
and filled with love,
this sunny, cold morning,
with incurable cancer.
I want to spin out,
Rumi-esque, into this vast world,
To be utterly egoless,
Boundaries dissolved,
At one with everything and everyone.
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to say what it is about the poem you like. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -JL