Tall Tales from Poland

Yes, I see the Cossacks on the subway,
waiting for the early train at Penn Station.
or the blackshirts on Melrose Avenue,
buying tight-fitting jeans for Kristallnacht
But this horror of horrors, Buchenwald and Dachau
are yours, not mine. existing in a victimized vacuum
of stories, tall tales, fictions from untouchable worlds
the mind fetters of 1938, still shackled as it once was
but no longer!
Portnoy’s passion brings fear of pogroms
in New York, bright California, after Yoga class.
"Oy! They are hiding on the screen! in newspapers, these pages!"
you tell me, cowering on the couch, pistachios in hand
Come see bubbe and zayde! Give an eye! Your enemies-ghosts, dissolved
from the camps, from America, and worst of all
your horrors only, to face unbearably
alone.