By Victor Altshul

ASSIMILATION

Determined to announce my blood is blue,
I basely claimed our heritage the same:
though we’d been only wed a week or two,
she saw the shtetl in her married name.

I basely claimed our heritage the same,
my oversized proboscis quite ignored;
she saw the shtetl in her married name.
I said I was a Cabot and looked bored,

my oversized proboscis quite ignored.
“Don’t let your New York wit show up in church;
just say you are a Cabot and look bored—
do what you can to pass for one, and purge

your New York wit; don’t let it show in church,
the white one on the Green I made you join;
do what you can to pass for one, and purge
the errors of your blood with bread and wine.”

Approaching the white church she made me join,
I felt a telltale tingling in my head.
“The errors of your blood explode with wine—
your bald spot glistens. Christ, it’s flashing red!”

I felt that telltale tingling in my head—
my exodus from Egypt was in view.
My bald spot glistened; my yarmulke flashed red:
I knew it would proclaim, “But he’s a Jew!”

My exodus from Egypt was in view,
though we’d been only wed a week or two—
I shout it to the churchtops: “I’m a Jew!”—
determined to announce my blood is blue.

Victor Altshul has been a practicing psychiatrist in New Haven, Connecticut, for over fifty years and teaches at the Yale Medical School. He began writing poetry four years ago after attending a psychoanalytic conference on Elizabeth Bishop’s villanelle “One Art”. He has published two books of poetry: Stumblings (Createspace, 2013) and Singing with Starlings (Antrim House, 2015). He and his wife, the poet Laura Altshul, have seven children and eleven grandchildren (at last count).