BROWSE Columns
✕
first
there was Dr. Stewart
mustachioed dandy sported
tweed three piece suit
gold rimmed spectacles
$350/hr for this
poor man’s Jung to
ask me over & over again
“What’s it all about Alfie?”
at 22 i had no clue
second
there was Dr. Perl
peering into fissures in my shell
her sad opalescent eyes pooled
behind thick lensed tortoiseshell frames
when i asked her
at 30 going on 16
“do people actually stay in love
for more than six months?”
third
there was Dr. Ford
green-eyed feline
smirking Sphinx-like
at my questions
knowing i had already cribbed
the answers by my 33rd birthday
but face myself
i could not
fourth
came Dr. Friedman
a Simpson’s caricature
of matronly Judaica
who didn’t understand
how at 43
43 oy!
i still believed that you
yes you were the Shekhinah
imprisoned in this world
fifth & sixth
a pair of forgettable late-comers
thanks to the State of Illinois
medicaid & the 13th Judicial Circuit Court
intertwining twin serpents one
speaking only truth & one
spitting only lies
but which to believe
my 46th year
simple
but not easy
Benjamin K. Herrington wears many masks and speaks in many voices. After his sporadic legal career at several BigLaw firms and international financial institutions sputtered to a stop, some truth finally hit him between the eyes, the bottom of his bucket dropped out, and he found himself incarcerated in a rural midwestern jail. While doing time, he started writing stories, poetry and songs. In doing so, he found himself, again, or maybe became reacquainted with several of his selves, again, as the case may be. He is incredibly grateful that several of his nascent efforts in prose & poetry have been published by The Prairie Review, as well as by Red Noise Collective, and that one of his short stories was recently selected for publication in an upcoming issue of B O D Y Literature. He is presently working on a novel (an autobiographical fiction roman à clef thing), writing poems, training for a(nother) marathon, and seeking gnosis.
