New York Jew

Josette Akresh-Gonzales

Poetry

11/11/21

There are kosher chickens in the
supermarket freezer section

so we plant trees in the Negev

There are weddings officiated
by a priest and a rabbi

so we send clothes for the poor Soviet refugees

Our taxes are low

so we import prayer books from Israel

Public schools are closed on Yom Kippur

so we are allowed to complain about the heat
on the tarmac at Ben Gurion

Country clubs’ swimming pools don’t
forbid us

so we import etrogim from Eretz Yisrael —
you can’t grow them here

Our temple pews are mostly empty

so we write checks to AIPAC
and pro-Israel politicians

We have a first-rate Holocaust museum in DC

so we buy Teva sandals and SodaStream seltzer

Whenever neo-Nazis knock over some gravestones
in New Jersey the news covers it

so we buy Dead Sea mud online

Josette Akresh-Gonzales is the author of Apocalypse on the Linoleum, forthcoming from Lily Poetry Review Press. Her work has been published in Atticus Review, JAMA, The Pinch, The Journal, Breakwater Review, PANK, and many other journals. A recent poem has been included in the anthology Choice Words (Haymarket, 2020). She co-founded the journal Clarion and was its editor for two years. Josette lives in the Boston area with her husband and two boys and rides her bike to work at a nonprofit medical publisher. | @vivakresh.