Milton P. Ehrlich

THE COLLAR OF MY COAT

Mother wanted me to be warm
during the cold winter months.
She bought me an imitation
fur-lined collar for my ordinary
Sears-Roebuck winter coat.
But to the local German-American
Nazi kids, I looked like
another fat Jew they should
take care of. 
They grabbed me off the street 
and dragged me to the back of Mount Olivet Cemetery.
They tied me, terrified, to a tree, 
and painted a huge swastika on the back of my new coat.
I would eventually learn that far worse happened to Jews 
during the war years 
when I saw it all unspool at the RKO 
on the newsreels every Saturday 
at the Maspeth Movie theatre.
But in 1938, the menace of the Reich first grabbed me 
by the imitation fur-lined collar of my coat.

Milton P. Ehrlich, Ph.D. is a 91-year -old psychologist and a Korean War veteran. He has published many of his poems in periodicals such as the Toronto Quarterly, Wisconsin Review, Red Wheelbarrow, Christian Science Monitor and the New York Times.