by Ricki Santer
ICE Detention Center in North Carolina to Be Among Largest on East Coast: The new complex near the Virginia border signals that even as ICE has retreated from its plan to buy warehouses, the agency remains determined to increase its detention capacity. —The New York Times, July 23, 2026
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| “Allegory” (1948) by Ben Shahn (Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, TX) |
Tomorrow’s art, if it is to be at all stirring, will no doubt be performed upon today’s forbidden territory. —The Shape of Content by Ben Shahn (1898-1969)
What will he paint to make the terror stop?
This red kettle bell ringer whose blotted, stuttered
lines contoured a lifetime for social justice.
In this circuit of fatelines, it is those whose lines
of flight crossed an administration’s line
into cruelty. To make detention so bad
they’ll want to deport. So it’s not a formal
visit because they don’t know who he is
and artists are damned liars anyway.
Will his palimpsest of thrashing marks show
what’s behind locked doors and spirals
of barbed wire? Tiny holding cells
with insects crawling, scant food, water,
medical care or contact with family or lawyers,
sewage bubbling up from shower drains, cold
nights that some wear socks on their arms,
other nights some in suicide surrender. With
currency of pictorial language, will he paint
another raging, demonic chimera with flaming
mane, refusing to suckle its children, leaving
their lifelesss bodies beneath its udder
in a heap of time-tested allegory?
Rikki Santer’s poetry collection, Resurrection Letter was grand prize short-listed for the Eric Hoffer Book Award and Shepherd’s Hour, won the Paul Nemser Book Prize from Lily Poetry Review Books. In 2023, she was named Ohio Poet of the Year and currently serves as Artist-in-Residence at the Fran Ryan Center in Columbus, Ohio and a member of the teaching artist roster of the Ohio Arts Council. Her fifteenth poetry collection, Could Be, was published this spring by Sheila-Na-Gig Press.
