Through the Blue

Sans Papiers, written as an accompaniment to an artwork about moving to America (most likely during a diaspora), uses simple language to invoke deeper thought and emotion. The title of both works isn’t completely clear in its relevance at the beginning but, as one travels both through the blue, changing forms of the art and the poem’s words, its connection to immigration is clear. The poem uses fireworks to juxtapose the acceptable flashes, booms, and smells of smoke that live in America with the explosion of worlds that refugees may interpret them as. The poem clearly communicates the losses felt with moving to a new country as a foreigner sans papers with the threads of memory discarded at the floor and the oceans it’s taken to swim to this new country’s shores, to be turned away constantly within it.