Melissa Broder
You were my Father

                

The psychic said in a past lifetime you were

my father, darling. So much for the shtetl,

now you wear a seersucker suit: blue and blonde,

blonde and blueblooded.

A minyan of men spent their days davening

but you were at war with a mad god. Hashem

was yours as much as he was anybody’s

though the way it was

written made you feel like a farmer without

any rain. There was no hope in anything.

Only a question: Live or die? Live or die?

In or out a door?

On one side of the door there was a small bed

and beside the bed a basin where you washed up

my girl hands, washed and dried the skin, the muscle,

the bone, the marrow.

 

Melissa Broder works as a literary publicist in Manhattan. She received her B.A. in English from Tufts University and is a Poetry M.F.A. candidate at The City College of New York.
                                               
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