Poetica Magazine


Reflections of Jewish Thought


currently updating
November 2009

Michal Mahgerefteh, Editor-in-Chief


The poem is included in The Crimson Thread collection 
poetry and drawings by Michal Mahgerefteh-February 2010



The Written Word


I live in exile 
far from the sacred 
land and only the pen 
minces my accent

the thick salty layers 
of words lessen, at times,
and I sample droplets 
of pomegranate wine  

Let there be Light!

within each scribbled 
word a logic interior; 
yowls and yawns as it 
totters on tired limbs

amid the opaqueness 
of darkness a collage of 
karmic ghosts; nameless,
faceless, thirsts for words

Let there be Light!

I seep through the 
pores of time, stringing 
one page into the other 
accented by olive-scent

no ear gave me blessing
but the written word as 
it unveils and inscribes 
phases into my Book of Life

Let there be Light!



©Michal Mahgerefteh 2008


Pete Freas, Short Story Editor


This poem is included in the annual anthology on the theme of Holocaust - forthcoming March 2010


Vernichtung


Drear Winter hobbles month by month
‘til Springtime blooms in shades of gray

unceasing drudge drones soulless by 
    each after each undifferentiated day

slate atmosphere oppresses
gold on water photo-flashing six-point stars
    chapped-cheek decorations
        riding salty flumes

stench of suffering and death
Summer snow keeps falling...falling.

Despite unheard-of numbers
    no despot can obliterate
    the final human soul.

©Pete Freas 2009



Michelle Langenberg - Visiting Editor


Through Spun Starflake

along the course of cosmic shores
through icy arc of comet tail,
the desert viper’s sliding trail
and echo of extinguished stars,
through lungfish, fern frond, spider lace
and crystallizing mammoth tusk,
through starflake spun in stellar dust
and monarch wing and panda face,
through time and all things gone before,
now this: one quiet tragedy—
a thrush egg on the forest floor,
storm-blown and cracked, life incomplete—
   a small unraveled galaxy;
   the universe lying at my feet.