Borawski, born in 1947

I found this poem in a new book I bought (Gay & Lesbian Poetry in Our Time, even though I am neither a gay man nor a lesbian).

Invisible History
by Walta Borawski

my shrink told me it was unnatural to be
obsessed with the Nazi extermination of
homosoxeuals Look at me I'm normal he

said I sleep nights & I'm healthy enough
to listen to your stories & others worse than
yours & I still have sex & I'm Jewish so

what's with these nightmares pogroms find
yourself a hot guy to go to bed with or
do it on the floor of his car but

stop it with these death camps. I
knew he was right, that his people had
lost millions more than my people, but

piles of emaciated tortured worked-to-
death gassed-to-death clubbed-to-death
bodies resemble each other & they

resemble us Look at that man on top
of the others Look at his beard He
could be me. When I was six my

father first told me about liberation
of the camps by the Allies he was
US Army & they entered at

last & those bodies, he said those bodies.
By time I was 15 my eye doctor showed
mercy to me put me on sleeping pills

Circles round my eyes I told him I
couldn't sleep & when I did fall I
found myself behind wire--barbed,

or electric: my head shaved an empty
expression leering back at me at every-
one in this odd century of horror

so systematic so oragnized. I'll give you
these pills he said But don't abuse them
& cut out the fantasies, you're not even

Jewish