We Go To Work For Unsettled Sums

-Yehoshua November

It's amazing the gifts we are given,

and still how often we go to the usurer,

how long it takes to find good work,

only to remain with the same old itch,

pushing us to the same places we've looked,

not knowing if the butchers thumb

leans on the scale.

And every hoof beat could have us on the floor,

the horse tired of reciting master,

and every voice could be the one

that dissolves in the forest

or the song that holds

the necklace of the lake.

Baal Teshuvas at the Mikvah

-Yehoshua November

Sometimes you see them in the dressing area

of the ritual bath,

young bearded men unbuttoning

their white shirts,

slipping out of their black trousers,

until, standing entirely naked,

they are betrayed

by the tattoos of their past life:

a ring of fire climbing up a leg,

an eagle whose feathery wing span

spreads the width of the chest,

or worse, the scripted name of a woman

other than one's wife.

Then, holding only a towel,

they begin, once more, the walk

past the others in the dressing room:

the rabbi they will soon sit before

in Talmud class,

men with the last names

of the first Chasidic families

almost everyone,

devout since birth.

And with each step,

they curse the poverty

that keeps the dark ink

etched in their skin,

until, finally, they descend

the stairs of the purifying water,

and, beneath the translucent liquid,

appear, once again, like the next man,

who, in all this days,

has probably never made a sacrifice

as endearing to G-d.

Yehoshua November lives in Morisstown, NJ with his wife and three children. His poetry has appeared in The Sun, Provincetown Arts, The Forward, New Works Review, and in other publications.  Prairie Schooner recently selected his work as the winner of the Bernice Slote Award, and his manuscript was chosen as a finalist in Spire Press' poetry book competition.  November teaches at Rutgers University and Touro College, and can be reached at yehoshuanovember@yahoo.com