Chaim Strauchler

Jew Me

On that train, the motor
Spins
Metal wheels whose tops soon bottom
Falling only to rise again. A sharp
Screech
Awakens me to watch.

Three black men enter.
Prejudge them, not I.
They may study surgery. For all
I know,
One day their scalpels will carve out the carcinogens bombarding my brain.
I hesitate;
they surround me.
One draws a knife.
The leader demands my
Identity.
Mom’s words flash through the window.
Give them your wallet.
Never confront them.
Sacrifice dollars for life.
But Mom, what if they don’t want money?

Hey man, you ain’t a real Jew.

Sympathy knocks at my skull,
“Alms for the meaningless.”
Poor history
Forces youth to steal my soul.
Slave boats ripped culture from their chests,
Empty. The ancient souls
Bow before a white god,
Suckling salvation from
The bible perched
On Master’s whip.

“Drop a coin in the can.
Not everyone’s as stiff-necked
Stubborn as you are,” my father’s
Grandfather would have instructed me
Had the Nazis not gassed him.
SUFFER two thousand years’ slaughter
To nourish a child with tradition.

The train rolls on. Spiraling deeper into the sub city.
We travel together aboard this cattle car, this slave ship.

No, I don’t care what color skin
Moses wore or whether he sported shades
To shield his eyes from desert light.
Only that I am his child,
Born of mothers
And teachers
Whose bittersweet tears I drink
To swallow God’s words.
Crown yourself a Hebrew today…
What name will your children wear?

Real Jew,
My grandfather preached to
A five year old suburban
A rifle’s utility in inspiring
A Polish peasant’s mercy.
Four years sleeping on the cold,
Bloody ground,
Eating pork and other scraps,
Dislodged his spirit.

Surviving hell on earth,
Locks the soul to the world as hell.
Cycles, my son,
my Life. Remember
One day you too will flee.
Prepare.

I,
The last
To endure my grandfather-
To prize a survivor,
Will teach my son of a partisan,
The child who never saw the face.

After the war,
Your great-grandfather
Traded away God at his pawn shop.
A tall man with your gray-green eyes,
Brought my father, as a baby, to Minnesota.
A hard mean man
Who saved everything, trusted no one.
Ate garlic every morning,
Washed fruit in baking soda,
And yelled at children for sitting
To close to the TV,
Spent nothing on himself
Hated life, but loved me
More than death.
Yonah, take the name
That rests above your crib,
Grant it the faith it deserved.

A generation of names
Wilts
Leaving me,
Who perceives no hatred,

History and its numbers.

Equal
I walk erect
Through the enlightened night,
Projecting a nose
that knows no caricature,
Blessed by prophet kings
Who built walls, limits, and powers divided.

Grandpa, they love me.

But, your words will not escape my ear.
Bags in hand, I too await the fall.
An evolving curse rots Eve’s fruit.
Entropy eats a society unguarded.
Laws, laws, mercy, men.
Time tricks all watch dogs.

One day, the train will crash.
One night, I will burn.
That human fire
Breaking potential to
Kinetic
Scatter
Death.

To listen at the crematorium door
To the stories the aged Chasid should have bestowed upon my father,
I cannot.
Instead, I sip the caustic heretical voice of my grandfather,
Shylock the hater of all but
Family.
Educate to fear
Learn, save, and flee.

The subway car approaches
Quickly plotting survival
A rat scurries through the dark tunnels.
Avoiding the headlights,
Finding a hole,
Suspecting all because all suspect him.

I throw earth

In that hole
Covering the seed.

CLOSE