before I start this poem

you must know

there are some things I've been thinking about:

fingers sliding across keyboards

further now, telling the truth

some runoff of the human condition

I cannot, will not tell a lie

your identity jam is beautiful

but before I start this poem

you'll know

that what you are to me is wrapped in word parts

affixes and mouth sounds

and I's and g's and k's and u's and b's and r's

memories and future memories on a reel

phone, text, book, car

text, book, phone, car

book, phone, text, car

but before I start this poem

Performance Script

my life it ain’t never been the same since
that day I saw they stringed

my daddy I saw he hanging from the tree by
he thumbs

ah when certain kinda things
happen sometimes you just ah

you just let the (w)hole widen
they tell you what makes sense to them
my mom would say
“That’s my little Jewish princess.”
and she would say
“You are a Goldsmith” “Yes, you are a Goldsmith”

What?

That’s my gran-gran-daddy/big paw/my father’s
father’s father. Every day they say he tell that story at
sunrise/he tell it like he praying/like he not really in
the room/like somebody else speaking it for him. they
say each morning when he tell it/it’s as if you just
happen to walk into a conversation he having cept
ain’t nobody there but him.

this is home. But where is home? Capital H- home.
Chicago?
Germany?
Denmark?

Israel?

The place that earthed you. The place that earthed me.
Zion.
This (dis)placed earth.
it’s a sore/a
wound/this ground/the place i grew up in.

that’s uncle daddy/he my father's father. I think he
done heard big paw's story once too many times/is
now a little touched by it
or something.

i am the cry that won't come out i am the pain stuck i
am the me that never was sorry
i am the me that never was sorry
white
Jewish
queer
woman
I was born too late in my family to exist.
scapegoat
existing now in a (w)hole
before you, buying Danish clogs
forced impostor alone
circumscribing outer edges
of the flat generational lie
through Belarus and Poland
eyes never falling on free terrain
no pleasure of dirt on a barefoot
somehow surviving our mother's land
wound up like a
splintered top
in sweet Denmark
to shake in a basement
rocking chair, starched calico dress
breakable as a Danish plate
and you weren't Jewish

under a black halo of curls
remembering day and night
handed down in a deep set eye
not a story
a thin undereye of blueblack veins

or a scarf for the cold nights
never revealing the bronze chain
dangling a delicate chai
around your neck
and you weren't Jewish

now I am for the
moments i choked away for the lost touches diminished
faded like yellow against the sun.
i was born too early to be allowed to exist i was
drowned the day i was born of heartache and loss
i am

assimilation is unfortunate
I contain the shudder, urban cramp
the smoke pole
a peer’s book

farewell French sparrow
me time is always here
when you need it

condensed packet sounds
like a receipt
motion distracting
the borrowed identity ink

inky smudge finger/smudge
on my hi five-r
too late to avoid this pen type
from the burning lip beans

it’s not pleasant
somebody diarrheaed here
pounding iron to Zion
sheetrock planks
cold and burnt
my oxygen bag

you seldom know
tested it for me, disparaged
I guess
you should remember twenty four
years and grasp, it
that okay?


this my available conversation
and stop opening the fucking door
she asked “Poetry or fiction?”
I point: stage left
she suggested returning two-fold
revisit the classics
check page three
review the neglected submission
relish the error.