If I’d Had the Chance, in 1914, to Warn My Grandfather When He was Coming to America…………by Robert M. Katzman
© August 15, 2012
I’d tell him not to go to Whiting
Whiting, Indiana
The Furniture store where
Big Louie
My Great Uncle Louie
Gave him a job
Where he learned some English
Not much
*
I’d say:
Nathan from Minsk
Celia’s coming to Whiting
Coming from Poland
Louie’s little sister
A beautiful dark-eyed woman
Curvaceous and knowing
She will beguile you
Marry you
And the poison within her
Will flow
*
When she was thirteen
Her Grandfather Moses
Was killed in a 1914
Anti-Jewish Pogrom
And the terror came to live
Deep within her