The Old Blood Libel Blues Revisited (a poem of betrayal)

 

The Old Blood Libel Blues Revisited (a poem of betrayal)

 

 

if you could

would you frame me

as an erudite Jew

tight curled hair

with a slight British accent

perhaps, a professor of film studies

oh so brilliant

lusting after your blue-eyed

blond protestant

women

 

or forge me

as a lord of finances

master of all the little tricks

that gift the wealthy

by trading on the misery

of others

 

maybe

it is more romantic

to think of me

as the eternal wanderer

pilloried from country

to country

beggared and brooding

but poetic

 

or more sinister

as a cog in the great conspiracy

the master behind every

head-line screaming disaster

running the world

from a dank basement

somewhere

 

these are tired tropes

so I know them well

but you, with whom I have marched in the streets

demanding justice and dignity

for all

when did I morph

 

into the Jew

who killed the farmer’s son

and used his blood

to bake my matzah

bomb children

steal land

and now stripped naked

stand worthy of your venom

and the lime pit

 

Albert Katz 

 

Albert Katz is a 73-year old Canadian writer who started his literary career in 2017, after retiring after a 43-year career as a Professor of Psychology. In the last two years he has had poems published in: “Ariel Chart”; ”Ascent”; “ Backchannels”; “Rattle”, “Pangolin Review” and the “ /tEmz/ Review”. His short story, Hocus-Pocus recently won the Kansas City Lights 2020 Flash Fiction contest. His poems often integrate elements of his past, his age, and experiences as reimaged from the perspective of what he knows today. In an early boost to his literary aspirations, Katz  had four poems  published in Ariel Chart. In January 2018 his poem “Vincent” appeared and in June of that year a trio of poems was published, “ A document of civilization” Andalusia”; “Aging, in a way” and Shard.”