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| Photo used with permission of the photographer. |
In spite of despair, dictatorship
looming, you can color a poster board, drag
your wide markers over its surface. In spite of hope’s
burial, your sign is a monument to streets with memories.
Resistance calls.
You too can have a dream.
Resistance speaks eloquently: Hands off,
National Malignancy, They All Gotta Go,
and the very catchy Fund Science, Fuckwits.
Resistance riffs you with vibrato.
It frees your pursed lips locked
with fear’s masking tape. Yes it stings,
the ripping off. You cry out against
criminals on pedestals, their dissonance.
C’mon people, why is the other side so happy
to destroy their own futures with yours?
You understand you are fucked, the charred
neighborhoods, your tarred and pelted planet.
In spite of this because of this— you get inflamed.
Resistance is a matchmaker, meetup for the terrified.
Its panoply of choices: Protect the Parks, Support
the Vets, Rehire Federal Workers, Believe in Science.
So many more, you parade for The Women,
The Immigrants, Kilmar Almondo Abrego Garcia,
and the disappeareds whose names
have been erased. Resistance tells you to notice.
On the street you are drumrolls, jazz bands. Resistance
doesn’t care about how it looks as long
as there’s a message. You scroll down its images
looking for what’s cool, feel your pain in a badass way.
There are theories saying it’s as terrible
as it’s ever been here, but resistance remembers
the tribes, the slaves, the wars, hate thorns thick
as cactus quills. In spite of this because of this
Resistance tells everyone This can’t go on.
It says, Today you will feel big and big hearted.
Resistance is bands of the bewildered waving desperation
at honking cars. It doesn’t promise to resurrect,
but maybe…Who knows what will happen when
Stop Nazi Shit ceases to wave in the wind?
Phyllis Klein’s work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, has won several finalist awards, and has been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes. Her book The Full Moon Herald a poetic newspaper, was 2021 finalist in the Eric Hoffer awards. She hosts Poets in Conversation, a Zoom reading series started during the Pandemic. She was having trouble writing about the latest edition of hatred and fascism we are facing, but the words are starting to come.
