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7 Haiku for Parsha Tzav (where the priests learn to love meat) by Rick Lupert

[additional-authors]
April 7, 2017
Tzav

I
Before anything
clean the ashes up from the
altar. Day begins.

II
Don’t forget to tip
your priest well. They can’t live on
all this meat alone.

III
In case I wasn’t
clear last week, do not eat blood.
It just ain’t Kosher.

IV
You know you’ve arrived
when your costume designer
is Moses himself.

V
Not a good day to
be a bull. Oh, how complex
to welcome our priests.

VI
Unleavened bread and
a ram’s thigh – recipe for
sanctification.

VII
Seven days covered
in oil. Both a fantasy
and mandate from God.


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.

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