A Literary Magazine in Support of the Jewish Community
LXXVIII.
from The Second Book of Job
Job was putting away 12 beers a night,
smoking two packs a day, just holding on.
Those numbers are merely external sums.
Later he would recall his youngest son,
pushed by his brother in the cart. That sight
from the grocery store reminded him
of the story of the Greek on the mast,
resisting Sirens, trying to outlast
the temptations. This Job suffered from past
regrets, darker spirits, dancing to drums
throbbing in his mind, and wanted them gone.
But they were just shadows cast by phantoms.
They’re behind him now: he faces the sun.
He moves now to a different rhythm.
J.T. Whitehead
J.T. Whitehead was the editor in chief of So It Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, briefly, for issues 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6. He is a Pushcart Prize-nominated short story author, a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, and was winner of the Margaret Randall Poetry Prize in 2015 (published in Mas Tequila Review). Whitehead has published over 350 poems in over 125 literary journals, including The Lilliput Review, Slipstream, Nuthouse, Left Curve, The Broadkill Review, Home Planet News, The Iconoclast, Poetry Hotel, Book XI, Gargoyle, and The New York Quarterly. His book, The Table of the Elements (The Broadkill River Press, 2015), was nominated for the National Book Award. Whitehead lives in Indianapolis with his two sons, Daniel and Joseph, where he practices law by day and poetry by night.
