Blue Jew

Eleanor Levine

I am Louis Farrakhan’s
favorite Jew—a lesbian
intellectual with a purple
Izod sweatshirt.

*

I am a bilious girl
on my birthday with
food poisoning from ribs
like Momma made.

*

I go to the ER.
A pipe in my throat
connects to Moses.
All Jews connect to Moses or Freud
or Einstein or Rothschild.

*

Me the Hebe rests near
a patient who prays to
Jesus—before she and
her husband have sex.
It is the mercantile
class they are offending.

*

The blue Jew,
black and blue,
dies with a pipe
in her throat,
without redemption.

Eleanor Levine's writing has appeared in more than 80 publications, including Fiction, Evergreen Review, The Toronto Quarterly, Faultline Journal of Arts and Letters, South Dakota Review, Breakwater Review, The Citron Review, Heavy Feather Review (print edition). Her poetry collection, Waitress at the Red Moon Pizzeria, was published by Unsolicited Press (Portland, OR) in 2016. Her short story collection, Kissing a Tree Surgeon, was published by Guernica Editions (Canadian publisher) in 2020. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by The Hollins Critic in 2021 for her poem “Elizabeth.”