American Gothic
We found it in a small Maine town,
the softly worn quilt, sewn from strips
of black, red and white.
That was the year we moved
to an old farmhouse, leaving Brooklyn
for this salty city, our promised land.
That’s nineteen thirties, said the dealer,
one hundred fifteen dollars.
We’ll take it, we said, quick and greedy.
When we got it home, we noticed
the tiny pattern of angled crosses
in white on the black fabric.
Swastikas rolled across the bed, like tanks.
Black for the boots of the SS.
Red for the blood of the murdered infants.
White for the snow falling
over the naked Jews of Poland
in the winter of 1943.
Was this quilt stitched by Nazi hands
so in love with their cause that they
swaddled their children in swastikas?
Burn it!
No, the quilt was antique, well crafted,
hand sewn. And perhaps,
they weren’t really swastikas . . .
We decided to keep it.
Folded in a closet, the quilt hissed
poison, You don’t belong here
with your Americana dreams.
Who are you fooling?
you’re just a yid in a lobster bib.
When graffiti was scrawled
in the Jewish graveyard,
the quilt prophesied:
This place you fell in love with,
with its lilac summers,
and silver tree winters,
this New England of Longfellow,
this tranquil place, even here
in this place you love,
you are not safe.
We took the quilt to an expert.
A Log Cabin quilt, she said,
from Victorian underclothes,
at least a hundred years old.
And that pattern, Hindu, not Nazi
We donated the quilt to a museum
where, for the time being,
it has stopped talking.
**
Published in Museum of Americana:A Literary Review, Issue 4
We found it in a small Maine town,
the softly worn quilt, sewn from strips
of black, red and white.
That was the year we moved
to an old farmhouse, leaving Brooklyn
for this salty city, our promised land.
That’s nineteen thirties, said the dealer,
one hundred fifteen dollars.
We’ll take it, we said, quick and greedy.
When we got it home, we noticed
the tiny pattern of angled crosses
in white on the black fabric.
Swastikas rolled across the bed, like tanks.
Black for the boots of the SS.
Red for the blood of the murdered infants.
White for the snow falling
over the naked Jews of Poland
in the winter of 1943.
Was this quilt stitched by Nazi hands
so in love with their cause that they
swaddled their children in swastikas?
Burn it!
No, the quilt was antique, well crafted,
hand sewn. And perhaps,
they weren’t really swastikas . . .
We decided to keep it.
Folded in a closet, the quilt hissed
poison, You don’t belong here
with your Americana dreams.
Who are you fooling?
you’re just a yid in a lobster bib.
When graffiti was scrawled
in the Jewish graveyard,
the quilt prophesied:
This place you fell in love with,
with its lilac summers,
and silver tree winters,
this New England of Longfellow,
this tranquil place, even here
in this place you love,
you are not safe.
We took the quilt to an expert.
A Log Cabin quilt, she said,
from Victorian underclothes,
at least a hundred years old.
And that pattern, Hindu, not Nazi
We donated the quilt to a museum
where, for the time being,
it has stopped talking.
**
Published in Museum of Americana:A Literary Review, Issue 4