Village Poets of Sunland/Tujunga welcomes featured poets Carine Topal and Rick Lupert on Sunday, May 25, 4:30 pm at Bolton Hall Museum. There will also be an open mic and poets are invited to participate in the open reading segment of the event. The Bolton Hall Museum is located at 10110 Commerce Ave, Tujunga, CA 91040. Bolton Hall is a Los Angeles Historical Landmark built in 1913. Our reading starts at 4:30 pm and goes till 6:30 pm. Refreshments will be served. Free parking is available on the street and also at Elks Lodge 10137 Commerce Ave. Park behind the building and walk a short distance to Bolton Hall Museum across the street and down the block.
Three Poems by Carine Topal
Chagall Psalm
For it was moonlight
in your town of old Jews
the quiet lunatic who
seeking paradise
drowned in the river
of his last winter
It was the tremors of childhood
through which you barely slept
a bed by a window looking
out to the near end of Yiddish
ash spewing from chimneys
the heat before the fire
It was Shemah for your mother who carried
the fever of a great loss
a child hastily named Miriam
her heart chambers closed in the bright
sleeves of snow
Moysey, think of the rows of amber-roofed
homes pitched toward the banks
of your frozen river
the viridian run
of the Luchesa
the fires before you ran
Published in Levure Littéraire
A Lamenting
When I came home to bury her she was already been bathed—draped in white. According to custom we must bury her within a day. It was January. Who would show in a cold that buried the city? I paid others to mourn my mother. I hired wild old mourners to wail. I leaned on them; 13 thin figures in buttoned-down fleece coats, short black boots, keening like distant spirits, letting me let go of the last thing on earth. Women with a gift. Continuous lamenting, hand wringing, tribal cries. A few pulled at their hair. Some softly wept and some sobbed in throaty ululations, said the unsayable in full howl, feigned a grief dedicated to my dear, my mother. I will remember her ushered out by the crying of strangers, widows who sobbed out of habit.
Published in Naugatuck River Review
My Father, Who Refused to Sit Shiva
We misunderstood our luck
growing up in that house —
third from the corner, where the forsythia
bloomed, as though to mock us, and my brothers hurried
down the street with a handful of bees in a jar,
for father who had a thousand demands,
who did not easily love, but was loved, who put the boys
in their place with a razor-tongue — afraid to let go of them,
yet keeping a distance — who lacked the know-how to father,
who struggled—feeling diminished in their world as they grew—
who held in his pocket the several sorrows of the world
when the boys grew older and first one, then the other died.
My father, who refused to hold shiva, though he sat fixed
for a week beneath the shrouded mirror. Friends
came anyway, pressing against us like broken stalks
under an impossible weight, some hugging casseroles,
others with bouquets, surrendering the bare-throated
flowers, a continuous loop of murmured comforts
feeding the machine of our grief. So many things
disappear in the world: lilacs. Even the bending light
leaves, though the windows linger.
Unaccounted for, the long-numbered streets.
A river that once flanked our city.
And father, overwhelmed and immovable,
withdrew, watched as those who could leave, left
the wreckage of our home.
Published in International Literary Quarterly
Rick Lupert has been involved with poetry in Los Angeles since 1990. He is the recipient of the 2017 Ted Slade Award, and the 2014 Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center Distinguished Service Award, a 3 time Pushcart Prize Nominee, and a Best of the Net nominee. He served as a co-director of the Valley Contemporary Poets for 2 years, and created Poetry Super Highway http://poetrysuperhighway.com/. Rick hosted the weekly Cobalt Cafe reading for almost 21 years which has lived on as a weekly Zoom series since early 2020. His spoken word album "Rick Lupert Live and Dead" featured 25 studio and live tracks. He has authored 29 collections of poetry, including High Moose Alert, (May 2025) as well as It’s Spritz O’Clock Somewhere, I Am Not Writing a Book of Poems in Hawaii , The Tokyo-Van Nuys Express, and God Wrestler: A Poem for Every Torah Portion (Ain’t Got No Press.) He has also edited the anthologies A Poet’s Siddur, Ekphrastia Gone Wild, A Poet’s Haggadah and the noir anthology The Night Goes On All Night. He also writes and draws (with Brendan Constantine) the daily web comic “Cat and Banana.” http://www.facebook.com/catandbanana and writes a Jewish poetry column for JewishJournal.com https://jewishjournal.com/author/rick-lupert/. All of his Jewish Poetry can be found here https://www.jewishpoetry.net/. He has been lucky enough to read his poetry all over the world.
Three Poems by Rick Lupert
Late One Night in Vancouver
It is late in the evening in Vancouver,
British Colombia, Canada.
So far, no moose have been spotted
except the carvings in the tourist shops.
The first-world trauma of the airplane seats,
has been diffused by the architecture
of this place. Buildings seemingly
haphazardly put together with Jenga-like
impossibilities, adorned with nature
and ready to move in. We have eaten
some of everything, though if an emergency
arises, the Japanese hotdog place with
ample vegetarian options is next door
and open until three in the morning.
Our son, back in Simi Valley, has been
spotted wearing a baseball cap
which can only mean one thing.
We’re just not sure what that one thing is.
Did I mention we were on a boat?
They called it an Aquarius and it was
big enough for a handful of us.
We considered it a practice boat for
the immense one to come. We’re planning
on eating more of all the food tomorrow.
You can count on hearing all about it.
From the collection “High Moose Alert” (Ain’t Got No Press, May 2025)
Hey Jude
Whenever I ask the question
do you know who’s singing this song
to my ten-year-old in the back seat
of the car, invariably he answers
The Beatles. And he is correct as I only
ask him this question when they come on.
He’s been dealing with this since
he was in the womb when his pregnant parents
(hi) saw the film Across the Universe
on the couch one evening and, in a fit
of revelation, knew exactly what we would
be calling this impending, permanent visitor.
Whenever someone meets him and learns his name
it’s impossible for them to not cry out Hey Jude!
It’s like a hiccup, involuntary, can’t be stopped.
He used to tell everyone he hated The Beatles
and then, at a certain point, it all clicked
and he started demanding their voices
on the car stereo. Who wouldn’t want
anthems sung to them while being chauffeured
to and from houses of fundamental learning,
religious institutions, and the occasional
pizza parlor? He knows who he is and the
expectations people have when they sing his name.
He knows what it means and how they used to
label people with his name on yellow stars
decades before men from Liverpool would
front thousands of people, their hands
hoisted in the air, na-na-ing like there
never was another song.
We put every weight on what we called him.
He crosses the universe, making our songs
better.
Lay Me Down Somewhere – A poem for Parsha Vayechi (Aliyah 7)
And Joseph bound the sons of Israel by an oath to bind their descendants by an oath, saying, “God will surely remember you and your descendants, and when He does, you must have them take my bones up from here.” ~ Genesis 50:25
When I die I want them to take my bones
and bring them to where I came from.
I’m just not sure where that is.
It could be the promised land.
If I could find a paper trail that definitively
had my feet there, it could be there.
It could be in Syracuse where the first Cohens
toddled around the 19th Ward before the
neighborhood became a highway.
My mother was a Cohen and though
my father didn’t give me her name
I still claim a familial bond.
It could be Florida. I spent some time there.
Though probably not. Please don’t
lay me down permanently in Florida.
It could be New Jersey where
I first breathed the air, but they
probably won’t remember me.
It could be Paris, but I think
I’d have to die there to earn it.
I wouldn’t mind dying in Paris.
It could be in California where
the foundations of who I am were
forged by the holiest of people
like Joseph, who became who he was
in the narrowest of places, but still asked
they bring his bones home.
Originally appeared at JewishJournal.com (January, 2025)
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