it is not upon you alone the dark patches fell.

Jewelry for sale at a flea market in South Philly.

It was not my intention to have a little water soak 
down to my chapped ankles through old Chucks bought 
the fall I turned fourteen. That fall before the spring that led me 
to leave that rickety house on Harris, where my father
learned to walk under old pines,
where he drank water straight from a hose,
and carved his name into a muddy rock, buried in the ground.
The king made his wealth and lost it,
damned and redeemed during a neighborhood crisis,
a widespread ailment among the masses,
wreaking havoc upon innocent noses
of Church Road and Southern Baptist charm.
When his house caught fire, he leaped from his bedroom window,
and bruised his shoulder on the concrete slam
while the kids down the street
traded their braces in for a good pair of eyes and lungs.
When that piece of immunocompromised heart was able to give itself a name
and feel the past come to the forefront and solidify in the here and now.
The hippo campus fired off 
dopamine in bursts of delight like that petulant child- who we will call Curly-Head- when she 
grabbed at her mother’s hand.
Curly-headed sweetness pulled up to see across the sea into 
Romania, Austria, Czechoslovakia, which was once known as the 
Kingdom of Bohemia, now known as the Czech Republic or Czechia.
Slovakia a close-by friend, a relative, for all intents and purposes,
a place of her own yet looking up, seeing her old friend progress on
while down the streets, banged-up eyes search for 30 years before, 
30 years ago, 30 years in the past, and all those other ways to say “back then."
Back then when biomechanics were all the rage, when 
antisemitism could be understood as a cultural cornerstone.
Curly-Head’s grandparents got out 
in the knick of time. The Wandering Jews kept wandering, 
walking on water till they found the great state of New Jersey,
o nouă viață pentru noi, diferită de înainte, 
never known before, before back then, in the past, 
down some dirt roads to that town, 
that Anatevka of sorts, my own personal Anatevka, 
whatever the equivalent of Anatevka would be in 
Romania or Austria or Czechoslovakia, or should I say, 
at the time, the Kingdom of Bohemia, now the Czech Republic or Czechia.
We all have our personal Anatevka, mine being the third floor 
of my high school, you know the one,
that building on Broad and Washington, on the corner of hope and misery,
you know the one,
the one with the decapitated McDonald’s across the street, 
that one,
the one with the kids, 
you know the kids, 
the kids down the street, the ones with the braces or should I say, lack thereof, 
those kids, those kids, on that corner, in that building, on the third floor,
that was my own personal Anatevka. 
However, for those kids down the street, it seemed that everywhere 
all the time was their Anatevka.
But Curly-Head hasn’t forgotten, it’s in her bones, 
in her mother’s as well as in her adoption papers. 
Place of birth: Anatevka, though really it was Havertown, Pennsylvania, 
not far from Center City or from that corner on Broad, or Harris even,
but it doesn’t matter much, it’s all Anatevka. 

Up on the top shelf, in the back of the closet
of the house on Harris sits a yellow felt hat,
triangle-shaped, the tip-top of a star.
It’s funny how yellow goes so well with us,
a bright, cheerful color that
awakens the senses while they all lack sense,
a sweet disposition clouded by a bridge of saints
looking down on us, so miserable, that miserabilism 
leaking onto the flagstones, into the river, into the drinking water 
into our bloodstreams, into our bodies, on the boats, across the sea
in New Jersey, in Havertown, down to Broad and Washington
to that Curly-Head who grew up there and wanted to go Ivy League,
that ivy that desperately grasps for higher ground.
She saw it, wanted it, and didn’t get it.
Fuck the Charles Bridge, but only a little bit.
It’s a high-standing bridge, a sexy bridge, 
but it invokes a certain violence,
my own private Kristallnacht, enacted by me against that stained stone arch.
Is that a rotten thing to say? Is it wrong coming out of my mouth?
I love those unanswerable questions of a complicated gene pool. 
Curly-Head says it’s not okay and I can’t use her name. 
Her name is a sacred thing, not for me to let loose,
but it’s there on her birth certificate, three different names for three lives,
one of which was all but lived, a misheard letter determining a legacy, 
that legacy and lineage of Helens of Troy, white goddess girl walking down
New York streets, glowing, owning her body and her mind.
I hate to say it, I hate to let it out, I was told once that 
I give a “vaguely Eastern European vibe” a 
“Back in the U.S.S.R” by the Beatles look,
a “Come and See” directed by Elem Klimov je nais se quoi, 
a, how do you say, shayna punim, a face of a bubbeluh shmubala,
a shmordi pordi pumpkin pie kissed the boys and made them cry.
Is this what they wanted to eradicate? Those glottal stops and terms of endearment 
translate to a comedic sit-down sit-com for all-American audiences to fawn over, 
to quote, to love, to mimic, to cosplay, to caricature, to involve, to see,
to play, to loathe, to scorn, to harass, to enjoy, to disdain, to agitate.

I know Curly-Head’s agita keeps her up at night.
Some days she just wants to wrap her hair up in a scarf,
become an old wise woman, a matchmaker, 
a balabusta, minus the cooking
because everyone knows that a Jew’s favorite thing 
to make for dinner is reservations.
Reservations we have for ourselves, reservations we have for others, 
for our daughters and sons, for what makes a white goddess who she is,
if it’s her father’s name (that is somehow Jewish) or where he 
grew up (very Jewish). The horns hidden in her hairline perhaps, 
the shark-nosed sunbathers on the beach. 
Is she that or something else? Can she claim that when not even Curly-Head had a nose job?
Aaron Copland wrote the great American melody, yet what if I told you
he was a wannabe, a sinner-eater, a vampire? He hid his horns well,
a Brooklyn-based musical artist, a New York-based musician, 
a Northeastern-based music monger.
His parents weren’t even Brooklyn, New York, Northeastern-born and based
They were Romanian, Austrian, Czechoslovakian, or Kingdom of Bohemian or Czech Republican or Czechian, actually Russian, 
just like Curly-Head’s grandmother, who brought a silver Nutcracker set 
and her finest pearls over from that cold, foreign land,
that before but then soon-to-be red scare epidemic. 

A first, second, thrid-generation leader taking her kids 
to the smokestacks of northeastern pride.
My father sailed over on the Mayflower, 
bid adieu to Anglo-Saxon custom 
and settled in Pennsylvania in the same century Shakespeare thrived. 
Unforeseeable circumstances kept his head up his ass,
but let me not speak so grotesquely, 
he was a good man with a subtle pride, 
a connoisseur of crystal methamphetamine 
who wore the tiniest shorts imaginable on the Ocean City waterfront. 
A waterfront condo laced with yellow brick roads leading to dead ends, 
appropriate appropriation of island life fit for someone of his stature. 
He was a good man living as he knew how. 
He knew not the weight of his words,
he knew not the gravity of the situation, 
he knew not the limits of his understanding,
he knew not the difference between an Ashkenazi and a nazi,
whether he might have been one or the other,
he knew not the every day misdemeanors of his language and actions,
he knew not what he knew not.
He was a 6’4 blonde-headed painter,
not like that painter, not anything like that, he wasn’t like that.
He painted walls, not pictures, white walls.
He took Curly-Head’s sons out to learn the trade while she sat in heart-attack-inducing nine-to-fives. 
His sister says that the eldest of the two boys resembles Christ, 
that the classic portraits were all wrong,
that Christ was a nice Jewish boy with
dark curly hair, and a big bulbous nose. 
Curly-Head’s oldest son is a bulbous boy, he looks like Kendall Roy.
Did you get that reference? It’s timely and modern
like Curly-Head’s ideals and tastes.
She abandoned her morals for the aforementioned man, my father, even though as a young woman she used to picket and canvass for a Jew’s right to choose.
She chose her future, her babies, her apartment and held them
all in the palm of her arthritic knuckled hand. 
But let me get back to the point, 
he was still a good man, a fine man. 

I had a dream I used his last name in our family’s old Church 
and heads turned. 
I became sacred, beloved, coveted,
a holy fixture to a community willing to help.
White goddess sanctity that Curly-Head says is true of me.
When I awoke, I thought, Maybe if they knew me and saw my white goddess girl face,
they would’ve felt differently. They would’ve flooded the house on Harris with bread and fish, 
shoveled our snowy driveway, and offered Curly-Head a pleasant hand whenever she stepped off a stair, treating her all lady-like.
Cause at the end of the day, that’s all she was: a lady,
delicate, needing love and trust. I can’t help but ask why her lady-likeness wasn’t clear through her curly-headed, hard-headedness. 
It must’ve been the horns.

All this to say, the dark threw its patches down upon me as well.
Well, not just me alone, but Curly-Head also. 
The dark threw its patches down upon Curly-Head and me, because we shared an Anatevka that followed us to Jenkintown, to Church Road, to Washington Square West, to Ocean City, to Havertown, to that house on Harris, to Center City, to that third floor on Broad and Washington, to Romania, to Austria, to Czechoslovakia, or what was once known as the Kingdom of Bohemia, now known as the Czech Republic or Czechia, to the Charles Bridge, to Slovakia, to Russia, to Ukraine, to Palestine, to Palo Alto, to Cold Spring, to Hoboken, to Margate, to Jersey City, to Chestnut Hill, to New York, and everywhere in between. 
Curly-Head resides in the Philadelphia suburbs, my father in the ground. 
The eldest boy in northern New Jersey, the second in South Philly. 
I myself reside no where specific. I flit between places and identities,
a nomad of my own body and soul.
Yet no matter where or who I am,
the dark throws its patches down upon me 
and I welcome those patches into my life,
sewing them over the holes of my favorite ripped jeans. 

Image of buildings on the edge of Center City and South Philly