I'm just two generations, a short span
away from Morris Weber's shtetl (Vilna)
with his dirt floors (grandpa), wet nurse
mother, and father away hammering railroad ties
in St. Petersburg
Two generations away from Anna Flicker begging
cossacks to rape her sister instead and Lily Longberg
(at sixteen, run away from Austria to Newark) rolling
cigars for two cents an hour and capping bulbs in
Edison's factory for not a fraction more
Two generations away from a dirt poor Max Schwartz
Natchez Mississip cowboy abandoned by a widower
father sent to peel potatoes in the army
I'm from the front stoop of two school teachers who
clawed/climbed their way through too many
moonlightings to the middle class.
I sit here in this giant waffle of an office tower
remembering the sound of motorcycle gangs
the smell of too much sex
and the depths of not enough drugs
I know where I come from
I know there are some napkins
I did not learn to fold
I know who I am
I sing/hum/moan it like a mantra
I
know
who
I
am
I say it like a juju/talisman/mezuzah
I know who I am (feh/spit/feh be gone evil spirits)
It does not matter what place settings you see.