They’re Circumcising Hearts Now: A Poem for Torah Portion Nitzavim-Vayelech

And the Lord, your God, will circumcise your heart
and the heart of your offspring

My first thought, and you’ll forgive me everyone
who cringes when even a holy scalpel approaches
is finally! Egalitarian circumcision for everyone!

Even the ladies get to participate in the brit!
All you need is a heart and the covenant is yours.
The pink ceiling is broken.

So, do you have a heart and how big is it?
Even if a piece is taken, is there room in it
for memories and promises?

What Voice informs who can occupy
the space between your ventricles?
Do you hear the sounds of need and pain?

We are footsteps away from a land
promised to our foreparents.
After you dip your feet in the river

and arrive, no return to that soil
how will you shape this clean slate?
When a part of your heart is taken

it is not disconnected from you, but
just taking up space inside someone else.
Our covenant is with the Holy One

and the Holy One is every soul you meet
every fist you bump, every set of eyes
you’re lucky enough to see with your own.

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 “The Tokyo-Van Nuys Express” (Poems written in Japan – Ain’t Got No Press, August 2020) 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.