Artist’s Statement: These poems are from a longer manuscript, A Ghost Has No Fantasies, and are engaged with bringing to light and reframing the persecution of gay men and lesbians during the Holocaust. As an example of docupoetry, the poems are found texts, assembled from memoirs, first-hand accounts, and archival documents—all written by these men and women. Every once in a while, I return to the manuscript and see what edits and revisions I can make. Because I’m interested in the intersection of visual art and poetry (and how both mediums influence each other), I wanted to try and capture a tonal register in the poems that couldn’t be activated by language alone. When I read what these men and women said, I’m sometimes overcome by a feeling of existential devastation over what they experienced at the camps and I can only hope that I have honored—even a little—their lives.
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