A Literary Magazine in Support of the Jewish Community
The Annual Passage
You no longer pray since
there is no one to pray to.
But you still fast, alone,
as a matter of habit,
sealing your book yourself,
an aging world preparing itself
to fall into a cold and dry senescence.
The delicate musculature
of dancing in your hunger
belongs to a divine bureaucracy
on an annual inspection
of the three realms of knowing
that when you talk about something
too painful to talk about, you only lie,
and the lies you tell
tell you who you are.
Marc Jampole
Marc Jampole is the author of one novel, The Brothers Silver (Owl Canyon Press, 2021) and two books of poetry, Music from Words (Bellday Books, 2007) and Cubist States of Mind/Not the Cruelest Month (Poet’s Haven Press, 2017). The Brothers Silver was a finalist for the 2022 Next Generation Indie Book Award in Fiction. Hundreds of his poems and short stories have appeared in literary journals and anthologies. A former television news reporter and public relations executive, Marc currently writes poetry and fiction full time.
