Reading 18th Century Rabbi Correspondence Poem by Alexandre Nodopaka

Recently I acquired a manuscript, Jewish Letters
published in their original 1742 dialect. By my
adept hand the leather binding was resuscitated with
the finest restorative organic ointments available.

Then I gave it the finishing fore and middle finger
application of cowboy leather boot pomade.
It felt appropriate to honor my mixed ancestry.
Nothing like a Cossack farm boy riding the

Steppes of California in search of his Napoleonic
roots and the wisdom of his goyish lost tribe.
I consider this period literature as significant as
the Dead Sea Scrolls are to the Judeo-Christians.

My Greek Orthodox soul at long last immersed in
centuries past. Gently fingering the pages by
their spine, careful not to tongue the tips of my
forefinger lest my macrobiotic oils and acids

might cause harm to the precious leaves
I steadily progressed, slowly adapting my silent
enunciation to the intermingled ess's and eff's
common to the spelling dictums of that period.

By the middle of Aaron's first letter to Jacob
I felt it was easier to lisp the words
and in that manner in a few evenings I finished
reading the tome having found zero reference to

Taras Bulba, my childhood unmythological hero.
By the end of the book my lisping aped Capote's
while my reading was far from his class but I never
pretended to be anything other than a closeted jester.