First Edition features new original works by Northern California Jewish writers. Appearing the first issue of each month, it includes a poem and an excerpt from a novel or short story.
by zack rogow
In this immaculate suburb
where I earn my daily bread
the saleslady in the French soap store
wears a white lab coat
as if dispensing life-saving medications.
Another boutique is completely dedicated
to sachets of lavender and anise,
and even the thrift shop is pricey.
Thanks be to Google,
the all-knowing, the all-powerful,
where many of the locals work,
I discover that a bakery
hiding in this town
sells challah.
On a Friday afternoon I hunt
for this establishment, squished
between Safeway and Starbucks.
The kind woman who helps me is Mary Anne,
named for both the mother and grandmother
of you-know-who.
And even though
Mary Anne asks me if I’d like the challah sliced,
and even though
the baker hasn’t quite grasped
that there’s no such thing
as too many poppy seeds,
still, when I chauffeur the loaf home
and its fragrance floods my car,
when our family gathers
under the eyes of the candles
to say the brachot,
we can still touch
in the sweet-soft folds of yellow grain
the warm hands
of all the Miriams and Abrahams
who came before us.
Zack Rogow is the author, editor or translator of 20 books and plays. His eighth book of poems, “Talking with the Radio: poems inspired by jazz and popular music,” was published in 2015 by Kattywompus Press. He teaches in the low-residency MFA writing program at the University of Alaska Anchorage and is poetry editor of Catamaran Literary Reader. Rogow lives in San Francisco.
Works may be submitted to fiction editor Ilana DeBare at [email protected] or poetry editor Joan Gelfand at [email protected]. Fiction excerpts may run up to 2,500 words, but only 800 words will appear in the print edition, with the rest appearing online. All prose and poetry published to date can be viewed at jweeklylit.wordpress.com.