by Howie Good
Antisemitic hate crimes in New York City more than doubled last month from a year ago, NYPD data show — a troubling trend that unfolded against a backdrop of high-profile figures making headlines for remarks targeting Jewish people. —New York Daily News, December 5, 2022
The nicely dressed grandmother
seated next to me at the holiday concert
began to complain under her breath
when the high school orchestra
broke into the Chanukkah song “Dreidel Dreidel”
after 40 minutes of Christmas music.
It’s a good thing I’m accustomed
since an early age to cringing inside.
My father, after the factory permanently closed,
would just stare at the TV for hours,
a broken man, morose, prostrate, unshaven.
Out of the corner of my eye
I examined the still muttering woman
and for once wished that life
was like the plot of one of those
direct-to-video Bruce Willis actioners—
blah blah, pow pow.
Howie Good's latest poetry book is The Horses Were Beautiful (2022), available from Grey Book Press. Redhawk Publications is publishing his collection Swimming in Oblivion: New and Selected Poems later this year.