by Barbara Ungar
Parading as Queen Esther in kindergarten
at my first carnival, in her long blue dress,
I tripped and tumbled off the low stage.
Yet I teach my son the fairy tale:
Queen Esther was a secret Jew, raised
by cousin Mordecai, who refuses
to bow down to Haman, who’s convinced the king
to kill all the Jews, so Esther risks her life
to reveal herself and plead. The king relents,
asks what to do to Haman. Mordecai says,
whatever Haman says to do to me. Haman says
hang Mordecai, so the king hangs Haman instead.
We rejoice: They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat
hamantaschen, tarts shaped like Haman’s hat.
Bored at my son’s Purim carnival
while his class intones Hebrew verses
no one understands, and the teachers mug
their way through the tale in drag, I read
the whole Megilla, realize this was Persia
(Iran), Esther was in a harem, and Haman
wasn’t hanged, but impaled on a fifty-foot stake.
As the kids trip, one by one, to the front
to chant if they can, or just read the Hebrew
with no vowels, or blush and break down
in tears, I read, yes, Haman did plan
to impale Mordecai (so it’s a grisly take
on the golden rule), but then they impale
all ten of Haman’s sons. At every mention
of Haman, everyone goes wild, twirling their noise-
making groggers and shrieking with laughter.
The besotted king gives Mordecai power so,
the text crows, our hero slaughters 75,000
of his foes in the city, and who knows
how many more in the countryside? This
we are enjoined to celebrate as Purim.
Party on. A vendetta thousands of years old.
Today, on Purim, I see photos of rows
and rows of graves dug side by side for
160 schoolgirls, and a video of an Iranian
man in tears, holding the hand of a six- or
seven-year-old girl, just the hand, all that’s left
of her. Of course we’ll pay in kind.
While the US vows vengeance for its seven
(so far) dead, Jew-hatred blooms across the world-
wide web, and for every murdered child,
how many will avenge?
Barbara Ungar is the author of six books, most recently After Naming the Animals. Honors include the Snyder Prize from Ashland Poetry Press, Gival Poetry Prize, and being named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best Indie Books of 2015 and 2019. She has published poems in Scientific American, Rattle, Southern Indiana Review, and many other journals.
