Florida 3, or poem I wrote here

The nightmare always ends in one of two ways:
running, or hiding. In both versions,
I carry a backpack, or a suitcase,
once, nothing more than a toothbrush and a mezuzah,
Jewish star necklace pounding counterpoint to heartbeat.
I wake to the echoes of boots and barking.

My lover’s body shifts; it has learned to read my nightmares
without waking. Her hips curl against mine;
a hand soothes its way across my belly.
I have taught her to remind me in a quiet voice:
“They’re not coming for you, darlin’. Not tonight.”
Once, not quite awake myself, I asked her, “Are you sure?”

I have surprised many a lover
when I tell them I already know what I would pack
if I had only an hour, watched their faces fall
when I make the joke:

Two Jews walk into a mapmakers shop,
and ask for a globe and a pen. One by one,
they draw X’s through the countries
with excuses for not taking Jews.
Finally, the globe is entirely black,
and they send the mapmaker to look
for a globe of some other world.

Israel, for all the faults I rail against her,
is supposed to be part of some other world,
a safe end to a dangerous journey, the only question:
how will I get there?

Last Saturday a black-clad gunman
walked into Tel Aviv’s queer youth center
and started shooting.
The center, like many of its kind,
was in a basement.
I wonder if my people have forgotten
the primal importance of an escape route.

Dear Liz,
they will say that your death was merciful,
no fenceposts or barbed wire, no dogs or packs
of boys on the cusp of monsterhood.

And Nir, my grandfather will say that at twenty six,
you were too old to still be a radical communist,
but, he will call you a hero for the way you took the bullets
meant for the others.
The youth you shielded will mourn you,
even those forced out of the closet from their hospital beds,
shrapnel digging into legs that have not yet learned
to army march.

The Israeli media calls the gunman a criminal and a murderer,
because to call him a terrorist would give
the wrong image: a Koran, a kefiyah,
and cries of Allah Akbar as the shots rang out.
But, a Jew?

I wonder: Will the nightmares change?
Can a lover so gently ease me back to safe
if the question suddenly becomes not
how will I get there,
but
where will I go?