stupid little rich boy, you kicked out my tooth
and before it tumbled out the one next to it, turned black
and they both fell out
Come over, he said, why did I go?
To be chased around his sunken
living room, to be tied up, called stupid names
stupid little rich boy, I knew better
but what about my body is it
that makes you want to hurt me every time
we meet
It’s your hips its your hips you look like a girl
You don’t box at summer camp you look stupid
with your stumpy blackened teeth. did the sugar plum
fairy snatch your tongue, pull your nose little Jew
faggot?
Clothes full of tears sleeves full of numbers
It only makes sense, makes it worse, wide hips
sad hips big lips black hair dark eyes hide in
the scent of my mother, my father, my brother
all their long pants their suit jackets coats and hats
dry cleaned dress wear with plastic sheets to cut holes in
pull on lean from curl up like a somersaulting astronaut
There is the white fur coat from a Montreal first cousin’s store
My father, cigar smoking Jew man the scent of mothballs
in automobile driving for dinner out, and father’s
anger grandmother’s impatience the smell of stale smoke ashtrays
full of cigars father cuts with a metal cigar-cutter and
the picture of dancers La Palina, decanters of whiskey, foul moods,
so, they call me names Father calls our mother names
In our corner house at the end of Paradise Road
Near a ravine and houses with stained glass windows
TV pictures of Martyred Christian saints in etched plates
You can never go home again, you name your house,
House of Jewish Tears, House in the Industrial Town
House /Inside the House /of God
With its red plush carpet spilled grape wine,
under foot slippers big rabbit feet if I
could, I would hop away, hop away from here
to the Hope Ravine off Paradise Road on Rich Boy Street
sweating dreams fever dreams the moon is a scythe
floating drifting clouds so high so cold so dangerously
close the words the words left bereft and shattered
You are not normal not normal not normal
You are friendless If only I was normal
If only I was normal If my hips weren’t so wide
weren’t so Jewish the chosen girl hips
Girl hips like emaciated bodies piled on top of one another
in world war II pictures of Bergen-Belsen
warehouses bunkers schools of smoke
O Mrs. Shapiro,
Why do you have numbers on your arm
pale ugly blueish ink like those stamps on the side of a carcass of beef
Cows all friendless and bullied cut and bloodied
All the piles of bodies piled up all the carcasses with meat
Thrown on top of me
on the top my emaciated skeletal hips in newsreel footage
I dream wake to the sickle moon above the maple tree
The shaken tree by the skating rink
Am I a boy or a girl? Are you a girl, a boy?
Run to you you are a boy, right?
The boy with curly hair who makes my heart pound
Why is my hair black my eyes brown
Why the curly hair Why am I chosen?
Chosen to stick out who chose
me, they said we are the chosen ones,
chosen for what, for with my
hips so wide the path behind the house to the woods so narrow
at night in the dark,
You should be dead, To be dead to be dead
To be dead would be better
Little Jew boy with the black
teeth black and blue like a plum, thumb in your mouth
What’s wrong with you son, you’re anything but a man,
If only you were normal, to have been born normal, normal
like everyone else. Like everything else drab, dusky
dust and smoke-filled.
And Mrs. Shapiro said shut up and never mention
her pulled up sleeve, again (in or out of the radio shop).
Sometimes I think
It would be better
To have been born
Normal, normal, like everyone else
Like the little stupid rich boy
He said as he kicked me then kissed me
laced my hands up in too-big boxing gloves
kicked me with his steel boots
spit spittle from his mouth on my head.
Said I am the King of scrap metal , the king
of spit balls king of the River.
And I am the Jewish Monster, I will haunt your dreams