7 Haiku for Parsha Emor by Rick Lupert (again with the showbreads…)

I
Stay pure, priests. No dead
people. And for the High Priest
we’ll need a virgin.

II
It feels like the guy
with mismatched limbs gets a tough
break in this story.

III
Rejoice animals!
You will not be castrated!
No ugly ones though.

IV
and for the rest of
us, there are holy days to
observe and to count

V
We still atone but
how do we offer a fire
to the One above?

VI
After the heavy
we go into booths. The air
and sky shelter us.

VII
Twelve showbreads on the
Shabbat table. I hope the
judges pick the best.

Los Angeles poet Rick Lupert created a the Poetry Super Highway (an online publication and resource for poets), and hosted the Cobalt Cafe weekly poetry reading for almost 21 years. He’s authored 20 collections of poetry, including “I’m a Jew, Are You” (Jewish themed poems) and “Feeding Holy Cats” (Poetry written while a staff member on the first Birthright Israel trip), and most recently “Donut Famine” (Rothco Press, December 2016) and edited the anthologies “Ekphrastia Gone Wild”, “A Poet’s Haggadah”, and “The Night Goes on All Night.” He writes the daily web comic “Cat and Banana” with fellow Los Angeles poet Brendan Constantine. He’s widely published and reads his poetry wherever they let him.