What They Thought

by Bill Siegel (Boston, MA)

You thought you were Black,

my cousin said,

talking about high school

when we thought we were

twin brother and sister,

and I guess I did,

just because I read Malcolm X

in a school almost pure-white

My parents thought

I’d be a rabbi

just because I kept studying Torah

after my bar mitzvah

And even though I stopped at 14

even after that, they thought I’d return

Three years later, while the car radio sang,

my mother cried

when I told her I thought

there was no God for me

Another three years, Yom Kippur,

home from college, a note by my bed

We’ve gone to services. Meet us there

if you think you still care.

And three years after that,

when I brought home my shiksa wife,

even then,

even now, when they think of me,

they think, he could have been a rabbi

 ******

Bill Siegel lives in the Boston MA area, and writes both prose and poetry – about family, fishing, jazz, and more. He has two manuscripts in process: “Printed Scraps”, poems inspired by Japanese woodblock prints; and “Waiting to Go Home”, about family and memories of growing up. His work has been published in “Beyond Lament: Poets of the World Bearing Witness to the Holocaust” (Northwestern University Press), and “Indigenous Pop: Native American Music from Jazz to Hip Hop” (University of Arizona Press). His poems also appear in Blue Mesa Review, Rust+Moth, JerryJazzMusician, Brilliant Corners, and InMotion Magazine, among others.