Yehoshua November: Notes on Marriage
It was dusk, their home brightly lit.
Through the window,
I glimpsed the gray-haired man lifting his wife
into a dance.
Yehoshua November: Driving Back to College in a Storm
And as I entered the onramp and the highway curved,
I realized I’d forgotten the wayfarer’s prayer.
Yehoshua November: Hearing Roy Orbison in a Mikvah in Salem, MA
To submerge beneath the water,
the mystics add,
is to return to the Divine womb,
the way the soul returns to the Heavens each night
as the body dozes.
Julie Bruck: The Last Two Jews of Kabul
When his roommate finally expired at eighty,
Zebulon said he was relieved to be rid of Isaak.
The pair had held out in a decaying synagogue
under Mujahedeen, Taliban, Americans, more Taliban.
Baruch November: Dream 12
They tell me it is okay to dance
to this music as we all should
be very modern religious Jews
who need to bust the most modern moves.
Baruch November: Our Captain Speaking
hard pretzels curved to the shape
of life’s perilous twists
Yehoshua November: At the Request of the Organization for Jewish Prisoners
Three bearded rabbinical students in a rented car, trunk filled with menorah kits and grape-juice bottles, we pulled away from the all-male yeshiva in New Jersey and headed west, into … Continue reading
Yehoshua November: Falling from the Sky
When we found out our daughter had gone deaf, I did not question God’s fairness— not out of faith but because my whole life it had always seemed that at … Continue reading
Yehoshua November: Conjoined Twins
My father was a resident in the hospital
when my young mother gave birth to them. Two bodies
and one heart.
