Yeled Hutz

I've been told I talk a lot about being Jewish
thing is
you don't realize
how sick I am
of hearing
how awful it was to grow up Catholic
from every third person in Chicago
whine hissing from pinched nostrils of a too smooth nose
perhaps if you told me in yiddish
my unpierced ears would perk
at
the sound of that
lolling, phlegmatic, romance language

Yes,
I have tattoos
I have never once turned down a slab of bacon
and I am cut

cut
like fine
pastrami on rye
like an onion bagel
like my ties with Odessa
and the Cossacks that met my namesake

No,

I don't wear one of those funny hats
I don't fuck
through a hole
in a sheet

I don't feel guilty about killing your christ
and if I have to spend another Christmas eating Chinese with living dead relatives in Miami beach, I will pick up a holy hammer, build a time machine, and spread his palms myself

I'm here
to Jew
you out of a few ticking moments of your life
because air is free
and time is money
I will fill them both with my voice

I was different
I had to go to a school on saturday
not sunday, but Saturday
when cartoons were on

now this is only a minor gripe but at 8 it's a huge cultural stumbling block that worked to seperate me from the rest of the chipped teeth and baseball mitts monday morning the second I displayed no aptitude for being able to differentiate between the owl that wanted me to pick up trash, the dinosaur who wanted me to floss, and the million other anthropomorphs that wanted me to "Just say No" on those god awful PSAs

because I was learning to read
right to left
a language that
sounds
a little like I'm coughing

and my mother never learned to set the vcr

I'm proud now
you can read it off my skin
right to left

but at 8 I wasn't
because it wasn't just
cartoons
I was missing out on

I was robbed of
heaven

that wonderful place
everyone seemed to have
that justified being
good and meek and poor and downtrodden and...
homework

when all I had was guilt

they knew it
little kids have snots like bloodhounds

and
n the playground
every move is sacred
there are blood brothers and secret codes

everything is eternal
so why know me when we won't be able to be friends when we're dead

so I talk a lot about being Jewish
about Ellis Island and the land of milk and honey
about the prophet enoch and the prophet einstein
excuse me while race cards spill from my sleeves and I exploit my legacy

telling nazi jokes while my Uncle Mordecai in Golan scratches the 5 digits on his forearm

smoking cigars on shabbot

wearing blended fabrics at Jewish cemetaries

I am a modern
Jew
all talk
no history