Poetry Archives               

                                  Going Back Home
                                   by anonymous

Thoughts of four cups,
Severed by rhythmic tire bumps,
Bring on an eerie awareness.
I’ve done this a hundred times before.
Maybe Geulah?  Perhaps just déjà vu.

Betrayed by my caffeine fix,
Eyes struggling not to close,
Memories struggling to the surface.
Like an irritated child tugging at my sleeve.
Then I feel I was there. Free.
Crossing, embodying, the Yam Suf. 

Going back home.
An implied contradiction.
A sense of moving both forward and backward.
Both freedom and bondage.
Yet no tension in the phrase. 

Then, as I drive on, the neon signs cast me in their glow.
The scenery tells me I’m almost there.
Just as tonight, we’ll recount the story,
As we do every year, of the Jews moving forward.
Away from bondage. Towards freedom. 
Freedom to receive the Torah.


*******************************************************

                                   In One Week
                               By Dr. David Kaufmann

Why divide our time in segments seven-fold,

when other numbers may do as well

for the divisions of our lives?

We may count the seconds til the news,

or lagniappe in our days,

but the one within the one

is the week within the year.

Perhaps, Creation stopping

before the week was done

has left the limping soul

the all of life, or none:

It is the cycle of the whole,

(in the garden, guard the good);

the seasons shepherd, parallel

the changes in the where we are,

the who we'll be that's still too far;

the stories of a life in one week tell

of hope and fear and dream,

of youth and age and in-between.




Dr. David Kaufmann is a Professor of English at Tulane University in New Orleans.  Among other works, he is the author of the Novel, The Silent Witness, and co-author of the book, Judaism Online: Confronting Spirituality on the Internet.

*****************************************************************************************




                                    A Sigh of Grief                                 
                                by Michal Mahgerefteh
 
A giantnight bends over my house.
Insilence I dress in black, dry the
eyes thatshine a tear and sit lower.  

She willdie, the soil of my root, with
noimpression left for glory. Her mouth
longeddreams that died in her bosom.


For twenty-four years Mother’s lips
kneaded words with a pinch of salt.
Her beautiful green eyes - colorless. 

Cancerripped her yeeud  as she sank 
into pivotal years of panic andanxiety. 
Mother is lost to her engrossed poverty. 

I wonder:during her last Yom Kippur,
if thechicken took her sins, did she
swing ithigh enough? And prayers, 

anyhealing in the words for Mother?
Onlypieces of her Moroccan-Jewish
heritagegave strength to her faith. 

Mother, life’s crimson thread,tie it around
your wrist and follow the WingedHarps. 
A radiance at your feet will guidethe way 

through a brief echo of dreams andregrets. 
You lived, not faithless, but as astudent of
silence; infused new vigor intojudgments. 

For twenty-four years I cling to barren rocks
restingon your unused grave. Each seep
of minttea deepens my mortal wounds.  

O’Mother, open your eyes and hands. Feel life
beforethe end. Remember the Moroccan-French
girl wholoved to swing a dance or two, barefoot. 

I cannot find comfort. I cry withouta tongue,
how long     until when     how much longer.
I bend to Earth from the burden andstrain, 

and soak my soul in verses from SeferTehillim.
O’ Mother,  please forgive my tired limbs
punish me.   pardon me.  O’ Mother,  I love you.

Michal Mahgerefteh was born in Israel and has lived in Virginia since 1986. She is the publisher and editor of Poetica Magazine, Reflections of Jewish Thought - www.poeticamagazine.com. Michal's debut collection, In My Bustan, is forthcoming by The San  Fancisco Bay Press in early 2009. Michal is an award winning artist, with works exhibited in galleries and art centered located in New York, Virginia, and New Orleans. www.michalmahgerefteh.com.

• MOTHER OF MOSES 
  
  
  by Roxanne Hoffman
  
  
  
  
  Bored and barren this baroness,
  
  Royal Daughter of Egypt,
  
  whose beauty much admired,
  
  courted by countless knights,
  
  delighting in all desires,
  
  and yet she remained barren;
  
  no babe would ever swell her womb,
  
  rumble in her belly,
  
  readying itself to burst forth into daylight
  
  from these limber lanky loins
  
  to swell her heart with pride,
  
  to fill her gaze.
  
   
  
  And yet, a mother,
  
  catapulted so by circumstance,
  
  basic instinct, a dormant yearning awoken
  
  when she heard this young, strong-lunged crier
  
  afloat in his tiny arc among the reeds. 
  
  
  By birthright plebe - no slave -
  
  and as the son of a Hebrew,
  
  decreed to expire,
  
  to be plunged into the rapid rush of river
  
  and drowned at birth.
  
   
  
  She plucked him,
  
  like a wild flower among the weeds,
  
  and made him squire,
  
  hid his tribal colors - a homespun swaddling cloth -
  
  and his birthright to crate and carry caste clay stone 
  
  upon his back and never tire,
  
  like his father and his father’s father,
  
  master masons erecting her father’s empire.
  
   
  
  She called him son.
  
  She called him Moses.
  
  So they would call him “Sire”
  
  and like her father and her father’s father,
  
  Pharaoh, King of Ancient Egypt.
  
   
  
  And so this baroness became a liar
  
  and with Miriam would conspire
  
  to spare this Hebrew boy,
  
  who swelled her heart with pride,
  
  to hear his baby mumble,
  
  to watch this toddler tumble,
  
  and rise to talk and walk a man,
  
  to burst forth like daybreak
  
  and lead a nation
  
  out of Egypt to the Promised Land.
  
   
  
  She called him Moses.
  
  She called him son.
  
  
                                                                                                                          
  
  
  Roxanne Hoffman,a former Wall Street banker, now answers a patient hotline for a majorNew York home health care provider. Her poetry is anthologized in The Bandana Republic: A Literary Anthology By Gang Members And Their Affiliates(Soft Skull Press) and can be heard during the independent film, “Love& The Vampire,” directed by David Gold. Her poems have recentlyappeared in Amaze: The Cinquain Journal, Best Poem: A Literary Journal, Champagne Shivers, Clockwise Cat, MOBIUS The Poetry Magazine, Mirror Dance and in the Canadian journal Inscribed.She and her husband own the small press, POETS WEAR PRADA, specializingin limited edition poetry chapbooks.  Visit her online at http://poetswearpradanj.home.att.net to find out more about her press.