It’s Time for a Rewrite – A poem for Parsha Bechukotai

…the value of a male shall be twenty shekels,
while that of a female shall be ten shekels;
Leviticus 27:5

There are a thousand poems to write
about how all the genders should be
priced equally.

There are a thousand more to write
about why not to put a monetary value
an any human.

I thought someone else had written
these poems already. I’m sure I
read some of them.

It’s time to rewrite who gets what
until all the lines look the same.
Can you believe, in the news

men are deciding what will happen
with women? I could swear these battles
were won when Y2k came along.

Don’t we have bigger things to worry about?
Has anyone noticed the earth is melting?
Some countries have taken it

upon themselves to take other countries.
A man just walked into a Buffalo supermarket
to kill black people…and that wasn’t his whole plan.

There are children dead in Texas.
Killed by a man who was barely no longer a child
thanks to guns as easy as vending machine snacks.

How are we still focused on separating people
who have unique, identifying characteristics?
Women are worth all my shekels.

When the glass ceiling is forged in
ancient text, it’s time to take up our pens.
(You can type if you’re more comfortable.)

This rewriting – It’s overdue.

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 25 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.