Helena will let you take her picture for money doing anything—
Give her enough whisky and she will get on her knees and **** off a dog—
The dog has been trained and knows what’s coming—
She works for Abraham and always has a smile on her painted face

She walks the streets in red fishnets collecting money
For Group 13
On Lezno Street—
She lived to die an old woman in my arms—
Still saying through her cracked lips how she used to be a *******
In the ghetto because she had to eat, dry biscuits or ****, or both—
I still love her and always will
She dreamed she was German

More beautiful than the chosen few
More beautiful than the shiksas,
So beautiful she could me hard just thinking about her
She had no mother she’d admit to—
All the while on her knees choking,
She was into being strangled—
It made her feel so alive, even years later—
She would never wear fishnets again because they reminded her of nights in the ghetto,
On rooftops with the blond boys who wouldn’t let her know their names,
Pretending they were ****** a ****** with a broken bottleneck

In her tattered housecoat making coffee,
Her mind in fragments, memories of her ancient grandmother
Who was yishuv but whose own memories were scattered like sand in the wind,
She knew she had an Arab lover once, many in fact—
She was just like her grandmother—
Just like Ruth and Esther and Jezebel,
And Deborah and Judith and Eve and Lillith
Just like all the women in the books—
But not like them at all, just naked like them
Just easy like them, there were thousands more—

I walked in on her taking a bath and she insisted that I *** in the tub—
I loved Ann dearly and should have loved her better,
Should have married her,
Should have had a Jewish wife and been famous for it
Like the other black guys, but no—
I didn’t **** her in the basement alley
I bailed her out of Kingston jail instead
I left her alone to **** another man’s **** like the judenrat ***** she was,
It was a habit she never broke and never told her kids about, or did she?
Did she go senile before she died, I don’t know—

Is she dead? I don’t know
But one day a long time ago, she was dragged into a hallway,
Her worn down high heels left behind on the pavement and gang *****
In the hall beneath the mailboxes

But I do know from that day on
Helena would let you take pictures of her doing anything—
She was jokingly called the queen of the ghetto, but seriously, she was