Autobiography
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Just half-century Brooklyn,
a Catskill comic’s revel,
the onion-and-poppy rolls
on Ratners’ tables.

Not, God forbid:
famine, plague, or flood;
poverty, war, torture,
or whatever genius of evil.

I had just woken up
to infinity and zero
to the clock and the ruler
to the rage of onanism.

Rock ‘n’ roll tumult,
against Mater and Pater,
mouthing “Heartbreak Hotel”
to Barbara’s fired lips.

Or first-rhymed tongues:
a Jewish princess like a nun,
a sheer-bloused Gentile
intoning the Bible.

Under God the sun
forgive the pun
shtik infects the blood
though it’s anyone’s fiction.

Heaven knows why
yet how absurd
for a mathematician
to be tuned to words.

Leaden as the Sheepshead sinkers
the day I hooked
the biggest cod
that would have won the pool.

Had I not been the boy
to whom the captain gave
a chit to sail free
that I never used.

From Somebody Stand Up and Sing by Hugh Seidman

New Issues Poetry & Prose, Western Michigan University, Dept. of English,
1903 W. Michigan Ave., Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5331
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