His lover was as old as a pirate's grave,
she loved his soft hands like a time machine
bringing her back to her father's workshop
where he made dolls so lifelike
he often found his apprentices
w/ red lip-paint smeared
across their faces; he deduced they were making love to the doll
& feeling remorse that the doll was only the size of an infant---
his apprentices ***** immigrants;
eager Rabbinical students of Talmud & comic book)
who'd jumped ship into the harbor
to swim to the American shore
where immigrants, slaves,
****** & saints had landed before,
so he designed another doll; this one much larger,
a full five-foot-six in fact
& deliberately left it out unwrapped
on xmas eve:
His brother Sidney having front-seat tickets
to a Lenny Bruce show in the Poconos
invited the family
to get away from the snow---& off they went
to Yiddish Paradise; feasting on the luxuries
of the New World
(if only Misha
had gotten out
of the Old Country, holding her back w/ its vampyrs,
werwolves & Nazis---
xmas coming & going year after year getting colder,
the world no wiser;
father's long line of apprentices growing old & dying---
her mother passing of cancer;
father so old & lonely staying in the doll-shop
night after night as she too grew older,
becoming a star in Burlesque  
& 2nd Avenue melodramas;
She dated Sholem Alecheim when he was much younger,
but now centuries later she holds Robert's hand;
so soft, so much younger than she that it often seems
Robert is growing younger
every year as she imagines she is just a doll left out on xmas eve,
one day peed on by the cat & discarded---