The poems in this post are part of a special section, curated by Ori Z Soltes and Robert Bettmann, The Jewish Experience.
You All Wanted to Do It, But I Did It
I killed baby Hitler. I squeezed 73 million lives
out of his little lung. Every breath he didn’t take
fed legions of Roma and Jews. Das Institut
für Sexualwissenschaft was never ransacked,
its research never burned. Instead of the Night
of Glass, we had the Decade of Flowers.
Berlin became the first LGBTQ-friendly city.
Auschwitz became a parking lot. Schindler
wrote a grocery list, Eli Wiesel wrote love poems,
and Eva Braun sought gentler company.
The Olympics thrived, but the art world was
never the same. My Babi and her sisters went
to Warsaw on vacation, and they all walked out.
The name Adolf retained its original meaning:
“Noble Wolf.” When we split the atom, we found
our hearts inside. No one had to fear the shower head,
or the train. My father was born in bed, instead of
in a field. Why would we ever leave? In my pocket,
6 million plane tickets for cousins I’ve yet to meet.
Shidduch
Tonight at the Jewish singles mixer on the rooftop lounge the moon was an orange ghost masked in cotton. The speaker was an Orthodox matchmaker who believed in two things: go deeper, and listen-reflect-connect. There were 6 guys and 1 girl. Meanwhile the thimble moon rose higher. We talked about our top ten qualities in a mate and whether or not looks mattered. The moon looked like a heavy eye opening. We split into practice pairs and the girl said her priorities were religiousness and having-it-together, neither of which qualified me. The clouds fled the moon who painted a white lane across the black water. The boys were clever, the kinds of Jews who wear gold chains with the top button unbuttoned. Persian, Syrian, Israeli. They were not looking for wives. The moon’s cheeks flushed pale as winter. There was a real Trump vibe and the matchmaker said if you ever want to talk to your kids you absolutely must keep shabbos. The girl was cute, divorced mother of 3. We got along despite the disconnects. She took me on a tour of the Hilton next door and the moon followed. The pillars and fountains were like Istanbul, or Marrakesh. We made each other laugh. Had good eye contact. I think we must have been flirting. But the moon hung in the empty sky like a mollusk. It spat pearls at the wild Pacific. It swallowed me in its silver. I just could not stop looking at the moon.
Don’t Bomb the Children
for 14 million or more players
Setup:
Each player holds the others’ lives in their hands. Some players hold many. Others hold a few. None hold zero. Player lives are distributed according to wealth, social standing, and charisma. Player deaths are similarly distributed.
How to play:
Don’t bomb the children. Don’t massacre a rave. Don’t turn soldiers into cops. Don’t blanket the sky in rockets. Don’t level the hospital district. Don’t take civilian hostages. Don’t bring Uzis to a rock fight. Don’t parade the naked dead. Don’t cage humans in a combat zone. Don’t build tunnels in place of bomb shelters. Don’t form coalitions with convicted racists. Don’t use corpses as bargaining chips. Don’t block water, electricity, and food supplies. Don’t kill a grandmother and post the pictures onto her Facebook using her own phone. Don’t tell 1 million people they have 24 hours to evacuate. Don’t rape the women and the men. Don’t target journalists. Don’t hunt the innocent door to door. Don’t evict entire cities. Don’t burn families inside their homes. Don’t blame them for what you do. Don’t blame them for what you do. Don’t justify murder. Don’t celebrate catastrophe. Don’t call it politics. Don’t call it necessary. Don’t call it national defense. Don’t call it decolonization. Don’t call it a rescue mission. Don’t call it freedom-fighting. Don’t call it holy. Don’t call it God.
The first player to die of old age makes everyone the winner.

Eric Raanan Fischman’s first book, “Mordy Gets Enlightened,” was published through The Little Door in 2017 and reissued by Turnsol Editions in 2021. His work has appeared in Bombay Gin, Denver Quarterly, Twenty Bellows, Tiny Spoon, Voicemail Poetry, New Feathers Anthology, South Broadway Ghost Society, and more. He was one of two winners of Denver Quarterly’s 2023 Poetry Broadside Competition, with 60 copies letterpressed. He has taught workshops for a variety of Colorado-based organizations, including Crestone Poemfest, Beyond Academia Free Skool, and the Firehouse Arts Center, and he currently curates the Boulder/Denver metro area poetry calendar at boulderpoetryscene.com.
Featured image in this post: Full Moon Over the Sea, zeevveez, Alfredo J G A Borba, creative commons via wikimedia commons.