Poem: On the Line

November 3, 2009

Four or five Jews.
(Undone with themselves.)
A Camp full of light.
(Hidden in the closet of whomsoever.)

We’re here on the line,
spending our time.
Cheering the good cheer.
Ending the days with a sun.

I’m the ink of invisibility, all of a sudden.
Now I’ve got a kid,
one tiny goat,
chased by the sickle.

I never smoked a cigarette,
was a Communist.
Have such-and-such a lineage.
You have two boys. Me neither.

Three or four Jews.
(Throw the book at them.)
Won’t leave us alone.
(Singing the bonfire higher.)

I used to go to clubs. Dismembered then,
forgot to bring my walking papers.
White-knuckled a cab home
and left the baby on the roof.

Dreamt about ugly tits.
Have a friend sectioned by secrets.
My body is sometimes on backwards.
The clothes I don’t wear because.

Two or three Jews.
Prettier than I am
with hyperthyroid.
My eyes are so smaller.

This Camp is for birds
and crushes on girls.
In the play I am Nurse
or victim Holding-Lantern.

Never got to be the straight hair.
Ate too much cow hoof.
Won’t sleep on the floor
of the polished stone ghetto.

One in six Jews.
(Sent off to Jew school.)
Tell me again how it goes.
(If this is the story.)