Not male, not Jew. Impersonator, you
slink the kipa behind the Stetson, hat
the bully blond claims he wants to buy.

One can, she says, rewrite the story so it
becomes a progress-tale , a Bildungsroman ,
at the end of which our protagonist,

The masts are mostly gone, Walt. Pleasure-sailors
ply the harbor, piloting fiberglass forty-footers
down from the North Shore, one at the wheel,

Sluice me, stop my breath—still my 
  life to this, my fist 
taut, a hand of fingers feeds my 

I turned forty the year I wrote it
  all down, every bit
  I could remember: