​POETRY  -  
          With a Theme of Work 

Still Wet Behind His Stethoscope :      -    photo by Weebly.com                                                                

Prisoner Watches an Initiation
by Corey Weinstein

​This little show could not be missed,
My mop and bucket lazily hung out in earshot,
Cops cackled for the joy to toy with a new one,
Me goin’ through the motions along the hallway edge,
Those screws screwing with a boy-man in white coat,
Came from those prison lawyers I suppose,
Still wet behind his stethoscope, puffing up
through the trembles and flop sweat demanding,
Remove those chains, move back, we need privacy.
 
Organ grinding guards forcing a monkey dance
before he can see this patient for the first time,
Got a glimpse of his face when faced with
that face. Covered in crude crooked crosses,
SS bolts, spider webs, the number 88
and black teardrops from a sinister eye corner.
 
The dutiful doctor-boy looked anyway
scribble-scrabbling every bruise and scrape left
from the beating last week, delivered for just
cause by the unofficial gang in green with clubs,
badges and names like Green Wall or Sharks.
 
Derisive eyes lasered from the guards
snapped my dropped jaw shut
leaving me mopping and musing about
the well inked Aryan Brotherhood gang that
hangs out in peckerwood flats on the east yard,
They seem to prefer nice Jewish doctors like boy-man. 

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A retired physician, Corey Weinstein is a musician, poet, songwriter and clarinet player. He has published two CDs of original music inspired by the Klezmer and Yiddish stage musical traditions and led Umzist, a Klezmer band playing benefits for Jewish elders for more than a decade. He wrote and performed at various venues a singspiel, Erased: Babi Yar, the SS and Me to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the massacre at Babi Yar. He plays clarinet in the Or Shalom Jewish Community choir, with The Jamberries Jazz Band at Shabbat services at Rhoda Goldman Plaza, and with any chamber music group he can find. He lives in the Ingleside of San Francisco with his wife of 40 years, Pat Skala.

Other pieces in this Issue:  
Poetry:  
Takes Money to Retire

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