OK, I'd like to read a few more poems about growing up,
childhood of thing.
The next poem is called "The Jewish Family."
It's a poem that I like a lot because it
has a lot of energy in it.
And I guess there's not much I have to say about it.
But it's about the difficulties of growing up
in a Jewish family, about the pressures of love.
"There's a mother on her bed playing solitaire,
refusing to sleep.
Why is she suddenly old and bitter
and without sex to save her or pills to put her
under like a little girl?
Remember the fever she lowered with mercy, cooking,
and practice?
There's father striding the huge cracks because nothing
is wrong, dignified in his long coat like a paint brush,
spreading sickness, smiles, and fix it.
When we can't sleep, we roll over and over.
When we can't remember, what's to become of us?
At night, we play secret adolescence.
We make up stories to fit the bad things.
And by turns, we are heroes or victims how we feel.
One night, we decided to be losers,
to kiss our enemies until they were Jewish.
Then the grocer refused us credit.
Then it took forever just to peddle papers,
just to make mistakes.
Whose story is this, whose lifetime?
Some families never grow up.
With vegetable nerves and careful accounts,
this pain is for father for looking away, for frowning.
This pain is for mother who keeps it inside and sickens
who has organs removed, gallstones,
one lonely breast removed.
What can you do with a suffering child?
Medicine won't help.
Candy sweetens it.
If you beat him, the pain only clarifies like stove grease.
No one's to blame.
We are Jewish.
We dawdle around the table like wisely on attempted lives.
Every door I enter is the wrong one.
Every friend I have is a hoodlum.
Every woman I take is a bad girl with toothless parents
and dirty hair.
And I fall forever for our sins.
Remember the fears, the uncertain steps
into each other's arms?
And the house, daddy, bristling with soars
that wouldn't scar, card games unable to end,
policemen who never cease finding me
under pillows and porches, sooty and weeping, confessing.
If you love me, daddy, do it good.
Beat me up laughing, not crying like a sorry old man.
Why is love like dying?
Why don't we ever leave home?"