<<Jews belong in the oven>>
Swastikas and shibboleths appear in ink on a New York City subway:
transporter cars for a population of 8 million residents.
Passengers search their belongings for instruments of cleansing:
Purell, alcohol, tissue papers.
They surround the glass en masse to erase:
the letters and lines are dissolved, one by one, back into nothingness.
The process is thoroughly documented:
stories and photographs emerge later on social media platforms—
those waiting places where the innocent board unaware:
that history keeps burning so as to reach unfamiliar destinations.
Read More:
Subway Riders Scrub Anti-Semitic Graffiti, as ‘Decent Human Beings’ [New York Times]
Elle Aviv Newton is a poet, editor, art critic and journalist. She is a fourth-generation native of Oakland, California where she is writer-in-residence at B4BEL4B Gallery. Newton has lived in numerous cities around the world including Bangkok where she founded the Krung Thep Poetry Circle. She is coëditor and cofounder of Poets Reading The News. Write to her at elle@poetsreadingthenews.com.
