I’m sitting across the desk from

Dr. Yusef Ben Yakov

describing my dream about

murdering my brother.

He is wearing his alpaca cardigan

of many colors.

A photo of Portifar’s wife

inscribed sorry it didn’t work out

sits next to the Pharoah’s portrait.

A Cohiba lies on the onyx ashtray.

He picks it up and takes a puff.

Sibling rivalry he says

manifests itself in bizarre ways.

Take the time my brothers

tried to sell me down the river.

I’ve heard that story a thousand times

at the family seder

and he’s billing me by the hour

so I switch the subject to my dream of

seven fat women and seven lean ones

Feast or famine he tells me

life’s always like that.

As my blessed mother Rachel used to say

the first one hundred years

are the hardest.

I think our time is up.

(Originally published in Poetica Magazine)

See you again next week.