by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)
It could have been me
A survivor tells how lice
attacked her body daily
A man waits for an exit visa
in Berlin, 3 days, he still waits
The ship St. Louis is turned back
900 refugees are barred from the U.S.
It could have been me
A family goes into hiding in Amsterdam
They will soon be discovered
A prisoner, shriveled and starving,
throws himself against an electric fence
A baby is shot in the head because
he was crying in his mother’s arms
It could have been me
He is forced out of school in Vienna,
taunted now by former classmates
Starved in the cold in Poland,
he will do anything for a morsel of bread
They are marched to the showers in Auschwitz,
where are you, my God?
It could have been me… all of them could have been me
Mel Glenn, the author of twelve books for young adults, is working on a poetry book about the pandemic tentatively titled Pandemic, Poetry, and People. He has lived nearly all his life in Brooklyn, NY, where he taught English at A. Lincoln High School for thirty-one years. You can find his most recent poems in the YA anthology, This Family Is Driving Me Crazy, edited by M. Jerry Weiss. If you’d like to learn more about his work, visit: http://www.melglenn.com/
The Jewish Writing Project 