BEN SHAHN VISITS ICE DETENTION CENTERS

by Rikki 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

“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.

MUSHROOM BY ANY OTHER NAME

by Rikki Santer

Image combines illustration by Thomas Gaulkin / DonkeyHotey (Flickr, CC BY-SA 4.0) / VectorStock with photo by Vyacheslav Prokofyev/Sputnik, via Associated Press and NYT.

President Vladimir Putin of Russia formally announced a new nuclear doctrine this weekend, but the response in Washington was just short of a yawn.Credit...—The New York Times, November 19, 2024

Trump has a strategic plan for the country: Gearing up for nuclear war. —Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists —July 2, 2024

On the precipice of historical near misses who 

will go first, six or so decades of strange love

for hair trigger alert, are we on the clock feeling 

for the light switch, heads submerged in a cloud

of unknowing, more nuclear-weapon states 

on the chess board, silos loaded with missiles, 

armed submarines wander deep into oceans

and 47 plans to twist treaties, accelerate warheads,

once launched no recall, the mad mad 

mad mad world of it,  bunker down

In 2023, Rikki Santer was named Ohio Poet of the Year. Her forthcoming collection, Shepherd’s Hour, won the Paul Nemser Book Prize from Lily Poetry Review Books.

INVASIVE SPECIES

by Rikki Santer

Cartoon by Jack Ohman

Sometimes a jackass

is just a jackass 

a president once said

when he thought

no one was listening.

And some say

that when God

created the world 

he dispatched an angel

with a sack of fools  

to distribute 

one per town,

but the harvest of folly

seems plentiful these days

with its dangerous parable staining.

Tiny phones

in their back pockets

to showcase glowing selfies

and toothy tweets,

all these Looney Tunes legislators

who always have a guy

or know where to get one.

And they fantasize

about winning more

epic battles between

the us and them

or want-to versus should-of.  

Beneath the peels, 

so many sad bananas

vying for the pratfalls

of others.

Beneath their blindfolds, 

they swing hard

at political piñatas 

with tantrums

of taketh away.

Too late to send them

to their rooms to think

of what they’ve done

or have them vulcanized

when Mars attacks.

Their heads brim

with knuckles clenched

feverous for playing

again and again

their most favorite game—

capture the flag.

And now fat-fingered justices

join in.

In 2023, Rikki Santer was named Ohio Poet of the Year. Her forthcoming collection, Shepherd’s Hour, won the Paul Nemser Book Prize from Lily Poetry Review Books.

MY FATHER'S TREES

by Rikki Santer

The Yatir Forest in Israel ends at the border with Palestine. The largest human-created forest in Israel, 12-square-mile Yatir was created in the 1960s on semi-arid land with four million trees, 90 percent of them Aleppo pine. —National Geographic, March 24, 2023

after Hamas, after Gaza

A ring of trees in Israel

encircle his legacy, a memorial

from his bowling buddies

three decades ago. The certificate

declared from Leviticus:

When you come to the land

you shall plant trees.

My father never visited that land

and neither have I but I trust

his trees are there still in the Negev Desert

perhaps an arboreal Heinz 57 of carob,

redbud, olive, almond, pear, cypress,

cedar, and oak. 

Bologna sauce is what my father

cooed he’d squeeze out of me

when his hugs were hymns

in gratitude for finally finding

the good life with wife, daughter, son.

His ideas of assimilated Jewish

migrated to my secular shaping. 

Synagogue just on high holidays, 

Sabbath just another Friday night

for cheeseburgers and Hogan’s Heroes. 

And Zionist? He was more B’nai Brith 

bowling league and temple dues.

These days I imagine his Israeli trees

forsaken by milk and honey. Their roots

sponging up bloodshed. Their skins

trembling with gunfire and bomb.

Their bent architecture davening

a shameful Kaddish.

Their barren fractals of branches

reaching and reaching 

for nothing but air.

Rikki Santer’s poetry has been published widely and has received many honors including several Pushcart and Ohioana book award nominations, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and in 2023 she was named Ohio Poet of the Year.  She is currently serving as vice-president of the Ohio Poetry Association and is a member of the teaching artist roster of the Ohio Arts Council.  Her twelfth poetry collection Resurrection Letter: Leonora, Her Tarot, and Me is a sequence in tribute to the surrealist artist Leonora Carrington.

DAY AFTER

by Rikki Santer

for Sandy Scheuer (August 11, 1949 - May 4, 1970)

Before high school homeroom
as I slide the black arm band
over my bicep I remember
slices of what I knew of you:

in the cafeteria a half-eaten
grilled cheese with your army
of half moons claiming its
triangle of bread—

in civics class the waving
of your palm for the clean
target you made of each question—

in the hallway showcase
the beam of your grin
pronouncing where you were
destined for a first year of college.

This morning you are a distant
schoolmate, one-year ahead
but now a ghost
wish—if you
hadn't walked to class, stepped
into M1 crossfire, stained ground
with your jugular’s flow
became another memorial
for sacrifice biblical & bought.

Author’s Note: After half-a-century, the horror and sorrow of the May 4th massacre that occurred on the Kent State University campus still resonates close to home for me. I light a Yarhzeit candle each year for my classmate. This year, at the fifty-year marker, I wrote this poem for her.

Rikki Santer’s poetry has appeared in numerous publications both nationally and abroad.  Her work has received many honors including five Pushcart and three Ohioana book award nominations as well as a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her eighth collection, Drop Jaw, was published by NightBallet Press in the spring.