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Poetry Archives
You Teach Me Faith
By Yehoshua November
You stand before a stove in winter,
cooking soup,
and I know how far I have taken you
from home,
the sacrifice you make, as few Jewish women do,
in covering your hair,
your long dark hair,
the one physical possession you were proud of.
And I know this is part of what you give up
so that we may lie beside each other.
And I know it is you who taught me, our lives are not our own.
Pantoum
By Yehoshua November
There is a realm where hidden cabalists, dressed as peddlers, are still walking
along the snowy road to Lubavitch,
and a young boy, once again, pulls his first silver fish out of the lake in Vitebsk.
Time only belongs to this world.
And along the snowy road to Lubavitch
you can still hear the stream spring from beneath a gravestone whose letters have faded.
Time only belongs to this world.
Somewhere I am seeing your face for the first time.
You can still hear the stream spring from beneath a gravestone whose letters have faded.
Somewhere a man begins to chisel the lost name and the years between life and death.
Somewhere I am seeing your face for the first time,
and I am walking back to the yeshiva, lonely, not knowing we will be married.
Somewhere a man begins to chisel the lost name and the years between life and death,
and a young boy, over and over again, pulls his first silver fish out of the lake in Vitebsk.
And I am walking back to the yeshiva, lonely, not knowing we will wed.
There is a realm where the hidden cabalists, dressed as peddlers, are still walking.
Yehoshua November's work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Sun, Margie, Provincetown Arts, New Works Review, and Prairie Schooner, which nominated one of his poems for a Pushcart Prize and selected a group of his poems as the winner of the Bernice Slote Award for emerging writers. His work has also appeared in a few Jewish publications, including the Forward, Europen Judaism, New Vilna Review, Midstream, Poetica, and Zeek. His manuscript, "God's Optimism," is a finalist in the 2009 Autumn House Poetry Prize, and an earlier version of the work was a finalist in the 2008 Spire Press poetry book competition. He teaches at Rutgers University and Touro College.
Prayer
By Herb Berman
God is the partner of our most intimate soliloquies. ...whenever you are talking to yourself in utmost sincerity and ultimate solitude—he to whom you are addressing yourself may justifiably be called God.
—Victor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning—
I remember
the rose and amber slant of dawn
and waking to mystery and Mozart
and she turned to me
but now
in the long black morning
I wake too early
(an affliction of age)
and retreat to my silent gray study
and yet
there’s birdsong
the chiding of squirrels
and a glowing behind the clouds
soon gray
will bloom into color and song
and children
will squeal down the sidewalk
with slender young mothers
dressed in sunshine and laughter
and I’ll watch them
a voyeur of sorts
it was
an ordinary day
in the life of an ordinary man
who woke up early
and found himself
mumbling
weeping
praying to
his unrepentant God
Herb Berman is a semi-retired lawyer and labor arbitrator. He's been
published in "East on Central," "Humanistic Judaism," "Lucid Rhythms,"
"The Chronicle," and the web pages of Highland Park Poetry and The
Illinois State Poetry Society. He's placed in two contests sponsored by
"Highland Park Poetry." By invitation, he has given readings of his poems
at The Deerfield (Illinois) Public Library, Congregation Beth Or in
Deerfield, and other venues in the Chicago area.
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.
