fbpx
[additional-authors]
June 16, 2022
Yagi Studio / Getty Images

i saw your words.

red paint pulsating with your one-track message
bet you wielded that brush with
conviction.

i’m imagining you now, how you plunged the paintbrush
down
into a bucket of the cheap hue
the scent of acrylic making the colors go soft around you.
did they bleed into each other?

and i watch you drag the letters down
making your “j” twisted and deformed
“Jews are not wanted here.”

you knew eventually a Jewish girl would find herself confronted
by your grotesque calligraphy…
her world would go dark
and the quick-brush cadence of her musical mind would
mute.

she would recall the stench of gas
the slap-thrash commands of a man in uniform
because hate likes to echo through
pieces
of
space

and the colors around her would go soft
and bleed into each other.


Hannah Ascher is a 17-year-old poet and singer-songwriter. She is a member of Sinai Temple and a rising senior at Brentwood School. She wrote this poem after seeing a sign on a college campus that said, in splattered red paint, ‘You can’t be a Zionist and an environmentalist.’ She recently released a folk-pop album called “Making Space.”

Did you enjoy this article?
You'll love our roundtable.

Editor's Picks

Latest Articles

Print Issue: Got College? | Mar 29, 2024

With the alarming rise in antisemitism across many college campuses, choosing where to apply has become more complicated for Jewish high school seniors. Some are even looking at Israel.

More news and opinions than at a
Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.