My Blood for the Mosquitoes

Happy Yom Kippur eve. Here’s the Bonus Track from Please, God, Let There Be a Bowling Alley in Heaven.

I’m Darren Samuelsohn, and this is what Sundays look like at love, journalism — a dispatch from the notebook, unfiltered, from whatever year I happened to be living in.

It’s Yom Kippur eve. I admit to cranking up the volume on this poem, the bonus track from my recent book, Please, God, Let There Be a Bowling Alley in Heaven.

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Iceland, 2023.

I’m a proud Ashkenazi Jew. I come from two places my people found fantastic. I was a snowbird before I knew the word for it, a jumper before bungees, a singer who owned the lounge, loved women, loved life, loved so much more than my family. Genetically predisposed to trauma, separated preteen from mom and dad’s union — who knows what bad seeds formed, pitted one against another. The ultimate ref. I had no choice but to survive two boomers, parents who fought and survived and were born here, so don’t even ask. A line behind me that shoots sideways now — my blood for the mosquitoes. #30#

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