(no subject)
Blood Fusion
One grandmother drinks vodka martinis,
discusses Karl Marx,
and colors her conversations with
“Ver clempt,” “Shmutzik,” and “Oh vez mear.”
One grandmother cried upon meeting my father
because
the Jews killed Christ.
I swing to the side, as if I can hide behind the word
Jewish
even though my mother
attended church every Sunday of her childhood.
When given an assignment
in middle school
to create a family tree as far back as possible
I discovered that one side
didn’t go any further than my great-grandparents.
Everyone else was killed
or lost
in the holocaust.
On the other side
my grandfather proudly presented a poster board
tracing the men-men-men back to the twelve hundreds.
“We came to the United States
in 1647,” he said with tangible pride.
He didn’t say, “That makes us
Superior. That makes us True Americans.
That ensures our shining, golden parking spaces in God’s heaven.”
But words don’t always need to be spoken
to be understood.
I can’t sort through the blood cells.
I can’t weed through
the self-righteous, the racist, the reactionary DNA strands
to leave only the communist intellectual radicals.
And I
still
hide behind a
word.
One grandmother drinks vodka martinis,
discusses Karl Marx,
and colors her conversations with
“Ver clempt,” “Shmutzik,” and “Oh vez mear.”
One grandmother cried upon meeting my father
because
the Jews killed Christ.
I swing to the side, as if I can hide behind the word
Jewish
even though my mother
attended church every Sunday of her childhood.
When given an assignment
in middle school
to create a family tree as far back as possible
I discovered that one side
didn’t go any further than my great-grandparents.
Everyone else was killed
or lost
in the holocaust.
On the other side
my grandfather proudly presented a poster board
tracing the men-men-men back to the twelve hundreds.
“We came to the United States
in 1647,” he said with tangible pride.
He didn’t say, “That makes us
Superior. That makes us True Americans.
That ensures our shining, golden parking spaces in God’s heaven.”
But words don’t always need to be spoken
to be understood.
I can’t sort through the blood cells.
I can’t weed through
the self-righteous, the racist, the reactionary DNA strands
to leave only the communist intellectual radicals.
And I
still
hide behind a
word.