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The Third Candle: When Something Happens, Or Not

Although I am a political person, I am not a political poet. My poems are not about injustice, about all that is wrong. They’re about every day, and what happens in the smallest way. People on the street or the subway are happy to tell a stranger what they dreamt the night before. Still, every once in awhile, something happens, or something doesn’t happen, which should be a poem.

Fight for 15
Jobs so often
circumstantial
where we were born
what our teachers
said or our mothers
chances we have
to do and be
home care
workers with us
when we’re born when we die
people make everything
work always
people hand us
our food put
those french fries
into the fryer
tell us stories
stand with us
wherever we are
and we stand
with them.


About the Series. Postcards for Hanukkah is a sequence of eight photo-poems by Matthew Septimus and Esther Cohen. Each day, for the eight days of Hanukkah, we will release a new postcard, which we hope give some light to you.

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