In response to Lori Schreiner’s painting “Turned Away” and an article from the US Holocaust Museum
as you wait for a new country, a new way to find
your way out of sadness? Young twins, somber eyed.
You fear the ship’s turn when you watch the fade
of bright land, the stretch of ocean below a metal
porthole you’ll never stop looking through,
looking for ground safe with futures.
Your hands, strong beneath chins, hold
you both through sadness, eyes somber,
hair like fire, the singe in two hearts
turned away by Cuba and the USA.
But nights are more than a dark porthole
you look through. Imagination lifts you into
worlds of playing in the grass, parents reminding
you to let go of sadness. Young twins, somber eyes
below scuffed foreheads. The artist’s painting holds
you amid the ship’s sway before disembarkment
from a porthole you’ll never stop looking through.
Memories somber but find their way out of sadness.
oil on paper, 14″ × 16″, 2023
In response to US Holocaust Memorial Museum photo, courtesy of Bibliotheque Historique de la Ville de Paris