I wrote this poem as a letter to the star of david, as a epistle explaining my struggle with zionism and my evolution into an anti-zionist Jew. Though it is an old poem, unfortunately it is still very important and relevant today.
Dear David
a six-sided star fishes for identity on my chest
tucked under a mixed family it dangles like a
worm on a hook under American waters
David, you’ve become a constellation we no longer strain to see
like a king’s crown your light showed us through the darkest times
exposed us to the darkest crimes
when you labeled us
a problem
a question
they answered with genocide
another problem
another question
they answered with atomic bombs
more problems
we stop asking
and instead promise “never again”
we lie
dead
as our babies boom
might as well drop them out of the planes
it makes as much sense as cartoons
as war propaganda
Dear David,
they gave you a nation, but what did you say?
are you trapped between those two blue bars
or can you still get away?
because Israel was dropped on top of Palestine and seems there to stay
like one triangle turned around and dropped on another
you see David, my brother, cannot be anti-Semitic
if he is as Semitic as me
Isaac
Ishmael just wants to be free
but you’ve got him building pyramids from the charred dust of bulldozed and bombed homes in the Gaza
stripped of rights
you’ve let your brother sleep naked and hungry too many nights
you Pharaoh
cashing checks from the West
bank
you’ve become settled
in your thinking
unlike our Torah, you do not move
you have not turned
you six-sided sinner
you blind Goliath
you have a hexagon center that points nowhere but inward
what are you looking for out in that desert
is it another ghetto
are you somehow jealous of the swastika’s popularity among disaffected youth
are you trying to be a badass
or are you just an abused child now grown up
molesting your nephew and calling him names
Dear Davide,
our home-land is neither
just like the Christian Right
is neither
and you, my symmetrical friend
represent me no longer
you are a problem
a question
you answer with violence, repression
more problems
more questions
your jagged corners do not know how to answer
how ashamed you’ve made us
I used to cover all my notebooks with tiny pictures of you
now I tuck you under my shirt
in order to hide
my association with
my role in unwillingly supporting
your racial, national, religious apartheid
you make me sick, David
oceans away, you fish for identity on my chest
reminding me of who i am
because of how you can’t be
reminding me where i come from
by showing us where we can’t go
you are a fallen star
not lucky nor bright
yet I still see myself in you far too often
like some birthright trip to hypocrisy
from Crofton, Maryland
because all I can say is
never again
as I tuck my necklace away
and pray
that we end
this oppression
.
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JBT 