Sim Warkov

SABBATH AT STARBUCKS IN LOS GATOS

and lanky fillies in low-slung jeans
swish by my table
Asian tattoos two inches above the cleft
abs taut as all hell

and I rally to their full-frontal views
and I’m in awe of these fragrant pagans
flaunting their youth arm’s length
from small-town Daddy Mommy
Father Joe and Sister Teresa

and I jazz the secular English
at the very hour my grandfather
The Zaydeh would be studying
a page of Talmud in Hebraic Aramaic
at a shul near Burrows Avenue
when I was a kid in corduroy britches.

—from Rattle #24, Winter 2005