Latchkey – A poem for Parsha Vayeshev

So he left all that he had in Joseph’s hand, and he knew nothing
about what was with him except the bread that he ate…
-Genesis 39:6

I don’t remember the first time I was
left alone in the house. The house was
a generic term used for whatever

set of walls contained our possessions
as, for sure, it was an apartment, or
rather, a series of apartments where

somehow the rent was paid.
It was a different time which I’ve italicized
so any serious reader of poetry

may forgive me. You could walk
the snow-filled streets of central New York
at any age and, as long as you had the stamina –

Cross them to where the hill was with
your plastic sled in hand ready for gravity
to take you on all the adventures

you could afford. This elementary school trust
was born of convenience rather than
rite of passage. My mother had to work

and there was no system of eyes in place
to monitor the bread I was left with.
I remember once wanting to throw

a surprise birthday party for my mother.
The whole plan was to have my uncle
pay for a pizza on which they spelled

Mom in pepperoni. (I hadn’t yet discovered
vegetarianism and had never heard
the word kosher.)

When she came home neither the pizza
nor my uncle had arrived so I simply
yelled surprise! as she walked into

the empty room wondering what
exactly the surprise was. Joseph was
never truly alone in Potiphar’s house.

His handsome features worked against him
when lonely Mrs. Potiphar entered the room.
This trust was never violated but

it took a while before Joseph reaped
the rewards he earned for not forgetting
God was with him.

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 26 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 “I Am Not Writing a Book of Poems in Hawaii” (Poems written in Hawaii – Ain’t Got No Press, August 2022) 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.