HOW AREN’T YOU?

Reach your long hand out to another door,

beyond where you go

on the street, the street where everyone says, How are you?

and no one says, How aren’t you?

Rumi

Father’s face told me a Jew was never safe.

We listened to Father Coughlin’s rants on Sunday.

Sick to my stomach, when he gave the Nazi salute

and proclaimed: “When we get through with the Jews

in America, they’ll think the treatment they received

in Germany was nothing.”

My family trembled as 22,000 Nazi supporters

(Bundists) rallied at Madison Square Garden in ’39.

Since children in Europe were starving,

I went on a hunger strike until my hair fell out.

A Doctor advised my observant Mother

to try bacon and eggs, approved by her rabbi

as long as it was for health.

We kept a separate dish and frying pan.

I remember the dish, a picture of Little Boy Blue

blowing his horn tending sheep in a meadow.