Elijah in the Time of Corona – A Passover Poem

I
In the age of closed doors and mandated distance
I tried ordering Matzah online.

The only single boxes, (because with only two of us
eating matzah with gluten in it, we don’t need the five-pack)

were labeled not kosher for Passover.
Who in their right mind wants to eat matzah

when it’s not Passover? We barely want to eat it
when it is Passover.

I don’t think we worried about this when we ran out of Egypt.
We took what we could and kept our eye on freedom.

We’re doing what we can in this nouveau Goshen.
Even if the rabbis didn’t have their eyes on it

there will be Matzah on my plate tonight.

II
An Instacartress is bringing
Manischewitz wine to our house.

She wants to see my ID.
I want to tell her Manischewitz wine

is awful,
shouldn’t count as actual alcohol

and
is tradition!

I show her my ID and now have the raw materials
I need to make harosetz,

as well as have a little drop for Elijah
when the time comes.

I wonder if Elijah will be wearing
an N95 mask this year?

They’re saying the rest of us should wear cloth masks
and leave the N95s for first responders…

but Elijah has to go to a lot of houses
so maybe he has special dispensation.

This year, FOR SURE, no tongue kissing Elijah.
I’m not even sure about opening the door.

A plague has come to Van Nuys and I’ve got
nothing to slather on the doorway.

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.