FIVE GAME SUSPENSION

So, Kyrie Irving was hit
with a five game suspension, you say?
That’s his penalty for his association
with an antisemitic film?
Five games without pay?
Chicken-feed.
How many games for accepting vile tropes?
Ten?
How many games for condoning antisemitism?
Twenty?
And if he thinks the Holocaust was not real,
what then?
the whole season?

I can tell Kyrie my own brush with hate,
when I stepped off a plane in Indiana,
and a local inquired,”Are you Jewish?
Where are your horns?”
Fifty years ago and I still remember.

I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood,
bubble-wrapped against hurled epithets
Now the world has let these slurs
become common language, accepted.
Yes, five games surely is not enough.