What I Told the Psychiatrist – for Pete Willsman, by Kevin Higgins

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What I Told the Psychiatrist

for Pete Willsman

 

The cat pads downstairs and its claws

take their hate out on me because

he’s been up there re-reading his copy

of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,

which, one of these days, I’ll find

if it kills me, which I expect it will.

 

Then the wife joins in with an unprovoked

“Are you really wearing that?”

against one of my more

avant-garde jumpers, and I realise

it’s a symptom of her

longstanding admiration for

the architecture of Albert Speer.

 

And there’s the shop assistant who

by her very body language accuses

me of being a veteran

of Yom Kippur and member

of Israel Military Intelligence,

each time she rings up my

Vichy bottled water.

 

And those who’ve previously

marched and written against

anti-Semitism but now give

tacit endorsement to the policies

of the General Government of Poland

(nineteen thirty nine to forty five)

by disagreeing with me

about the price of parsnips,

or deciding to support

Leicester City. Worst of all is when

 

bank holiday weekend traffic

gets suddenly constipated, and some

random driver takes his pain out on me

by mouthing horrible words

through his windscreen

because he knows I’m Jewish

 

even though no one in my family

ever previously was.

 

KEVIN HIGGINS