Please

-Yehoshua November

August 23, 2010

Do not bring us your stories

of sunlight shooting across

a canvas

of sparrows sleeping on dusty windowsills

of a perfumed young woman in a dim flat, waiting

for the town magician,

of boys studying under the same rebbe

until they are men,

of men standing on lonely bridges

beneath the magnificent sky,

where the apparitions of their dead wives

appear to them.

Please, we cannot believe in anything.

Yehoshua November's work has appeared in The Sun, The Forward, Prairie Schooner, Margie, and a number of other publications. His poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and selected as the winner of Prairie Schooner's Bernice Slote Award. God's Optimism, his first book of poems, won the 2010 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award. It's now available at http://www.mainstreetrag.com/YNovember.html