A Literary Magazine in Support of the Jewish Community
On Easter Sunday, I Went to a Play about the Holocaust by Eric Raanan Fischman
On Easter Sunday, I Went to a Play about the Holocaust *
While you were painting colored eggs, I got
my teeth knocked out in Vienna. While you lost
your ice cream cake in the backyard, I lost my
professorship, my bank account. While you were
eating rabbit-shaped chocolates, the neighbors
fire-bombed my synagogue. While you licked
the cream from a Cadbury egg, I huddled with
my children around the radio. While Jesus woke
up groggy from his three-day nap, I slept through
the last boat out of Europe. While you gathered
for Sunday Mass, soldiers gathered in my living room.
Surely things will get better, my friends and I said,
while the Easter Bunny emptied her basket.
* Leopoldstadt by Tom Stoppard
Eric Raanan Fischman
Eric Raanan Fischman's first book, Mordy Gets Enlightened, was published by The Little Door in 2017 and reissued by Turnsol Editions in 2021. His work has appeared in Bombay Gin, Denver Quarterly, Twenty Bellows, Voicemail Poetry, The Boulder Weekly, and more. He was also one of two winners of Denver Quarterly's 2023 Poetry Broadside Competition, with sixty copies letterpressed. He has taught workshops for a variety of Colorado-based organizations, including the Beyond Academia Free Skool, Firehouse Arts Center, and Crestone Poemfest. He currently curates the Boulder/Denver metro area poetry calendar at boulderpoetryscene.com.
