Variable table name in eloquent model?

I am a beginner to laravel and the eloquent model (Last time I worked in PHP was PHP5.1) and have a potentially dumb/odd question.

The situation is: First of all I didn't design this database, nor can I change the design, but I do need to interface with it. Every month on the first of the month a bunch of new tables get created with "table_nameYYYYMM" (current year and month). The old PHP I know I'd make a string like "select * from table_name" . date('Ym') . " where" etc. and use it in a mysql_connect.

But what I want to know is if there is a way to do it in an eloquent model? Can I build a dynamic string and set it to the table name in a model? I've tried a few things that felt intuitive but I know my knowledge is way out of date so I wanted to check around and see if what I'm hoping to do is even possible before I waste a bunch of time.