There we saw the giants…In our eyes, we seemed
like grasshoppers, and so we were in their eyes.
When opening the front door feels the same
as going to war
When getting groceries is a risky proposition
where nothing is guaranteed
When the masks that keep the virus out
now come in paisley on Etsy
When people are taking the windows
out of the stores
When, in certain localities, they say it’s all a lie
while the death number goes up
While email after email comes telling us
we’re open now
accompanied by pictures of servers dressed
in head to toe plastic
When you’re afraid to let the arms of a stranger
wrap around your torso
When people are hanging from trees for
suspect reasons
When no-one can agree on
whose lives matter
When the virus and the hate commingle
like sisters
When people are convinced this is
the apocalypse
You can understand why a homeless
chosen people
would want to go back to Egypt where
life was hard but predictable
Where we knew the giants
by name
Where the choice between slavery and life
was always life.
Los Angeles poet Rick Lupert created 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 23 collections of poetry, including “God Wrestler: A Poem for Every Torah Portion“, “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 “Hunka Hunka Howdee!” (Poems written in Memphis, Nashville, and Louisville – Ain’t Got No Press, May 2019) 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.
