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I've noticed that of the dozen or so of my poems and short fiction pieces that appeared online, a bunch have gone dark as journals have folded. Heaven knows what the mortality rate of independent online literary journals is. It was so wonderful of them to publish our stuff. Here are two poems that appeared in Open Minds Quarterly and Grim and Gilded, respectively
A lot of my poetry centres on Jewish themes. Here's a sample that appeared once in Poetica.
"We Take On" (The Aleinu)
We Take On
The pedestals
their forges
What we put on them
the greats and greatnesses
the origin stories
that made us not this, not that
not the backs that worked the land
not the pouring out of life across the soil
When the time came for
You get this, you get that
We were somewhere else
Prowess, they were told
Glory, they were told
And we watched the bowing down
the emptying of hollows
Picture this instead
the lion, limbs spread out
eyes half-closed
the gazelle that trusts
bends down to drink
unsure of anything except that it’s time
time to bow low, to be humble and safe
for now
for whatever is
Now comes the trippy part
In sight of the king
(they had queens then too)
the sovereign, then
the sovereign of sovereigns of sovereigns
sovereigns all the way up
what we worship
with the bended knee
like the giraffe, which has to kneel
to drink, to survive
The order of things
the fundamental constants
for the skies to spread out like a blanket
for the land to be forged
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