"22" or "The Jewish Poem"

Up front, they misfigured the figure:

maybe twenty-five, maybe fifteen--but

numbers mean nothing

without the sense of sticky silence resonating

across ancient bloody lines,

vibrating like a vicious current splitting centuries.

The unfortunate were featured in foreboding full color,

bittersweet eyes nestled deep in beds of

malicious melancholy--and again,

we forget to recognize the sacrifice of the

bomber's suicide.

It flash-froze the ebb and flow of my arteries

like no five-thirty a.m. could do on its own--

my pulse plunged to absolutely zero,

and I was suddenly sixty seconds of stone.

The icy ceiling of my family's folklore collapsed,

and I was avalanched by the before

that bore and bred me.

My grandmother's pilgrimage

from Europe to Evita's Argentina to Canada to

South Side Chicago,

her rabbi husband's migration to godlessness,

their ceaseless searching without invitation--

their determination

stops me cold.

I am retracing tenuous tracks of old,

and the endless mantra of

KIKE KIKE KIKE

is reminiscent of another march.

I cannot embark upon this Christless crusade

alone.

I am made of stuff too timeless:

gnarled nomadic wisdom, delirious destiny,

and imagined sins as of yet unatoned.

With every six o'clock sunset story

that masks murder behind bitter tea-leaf faces

without wondering why,

I remember that suppression is not a black and white line,

oppression is not a case of cunt versus cock,

and the holy bedrock of subordination

grounds more worldly wingéd dreams

than it seems from our blue-eyed ivory tower.

Sometimes power lies somewhere dastardly distant;

sometimes power simply lies.

Right about now I usually slide toward the phone,

then beg, borrow, or bounce a check

for gas to get my ass home,

where I nap in a patchwork papoose

beneath portraits of patchworked generations.

My people are a patchy way station,

but they remember that Kathleen means, "beautiful eyed,"

Schector means "butcher,"

and Frederick means something I never say right--

but that side of the family reminds me to fight.

What if I had nowhere to house my memories?

What if I was squashed--

not like a raisin in the sun, but a grape in a press--

into consecrated, bloody wine

for the ignition of a furious, congregated fire?

What if I'd been forever bound by Biblical barbed wire

and blamed for the brunt of creation

without even the boundaries of a nation?

Yes, I believe in Israel--

because everyone needs a safety zone,

and maybe, maybe we just want to go home.

So kiss me, bitter cousin,

and cry a billion briny tears

for the unsheltered sorrow, the sweet lives lost,

and too many misunderstood years.

When I die, reclaim me:

I want to be cremated

I want to be commemorated

I want to be celebrated.

Whose cemetery will swallow me?

We should figure it out, for my own health--

because if one more friend tells me I'm not a Jew,

I might explode myself.