When I read that poem where your mother-in-law said, You’ve always
been a little Jew about the waist, I think of my Grandpa and Baba
on Coney Island—clotheslines, smell of asphalt in the heat.
They spoke Yiddish. No, I didn’t think we yet; my sister
and I didn’t want to be too Jewish. The mannequins
in Grandpa’s office fixtures shop on Broome Street,
Lower East Side. Fuh-GET-about-it, said my cousin
Judy, who built her mansion in Jersey with breezeways.
What a word. Breezeway. In college, I used a pen name
Devereux, like a cigarette man on a black op, noble, a bit dishabille,
half-hidden like this sun in smoke from wild fires on the hills.
When I read Nietzsche, my father said, The Nazis
got a lot from him, like your mom’s mother, that anti-Semite...
My mom converted to keep the peace
but said, It was the stupidest thing I ever did. On a hot day
in July, I walked uphill and converted. He said his parents
would sit shiva if I didn’t. Years later, he said, ‘No,
that never would’ve happened.’
Yes, something burning, this cargo of coal smoldering.
It was all a dance, said Judy, a fire dancer on no meds
who went down in her own mentally ill-lit flames.
Like you, she had a coat of no opprobrium
she performed in. At age 65, I got my adult Bar Mitzvah.
My 95-year-old mother
said, Remember, you’re half-Christian.
I said nothing. Erin, did you ever tell your mother-in-law
you’re a wanna-be Jew?