CHICAGO STOCK (YARDS) 1954

WHISPERS OF THE NOW

by Corey Weinstein

We were born on a sigh of relief

trembling lips after Nazi butchers’ blade,

pasty grins of “don’t mention it please”

elders hiding this truth from their brood.

 

Trembling from Babi Yar family’s ruin

our adults invoked a solace of silence.

Just let us strive, be free range kids. 

We, fizzy bubbles of sorrows’ cauldron.

 

     (now this genocide in Palestine)

     (children, press, doctors targets)

 

High grades and high jinks were our sweet lot

summer’s play, bikes and balls all day.

Bubbles can only break, learn the horror

noxious smells waft up from stockyards.

 

     (rubble trapped death stench)

     (homes and hope lie in waste)

 

Hot days joy mixed with sirloin slaughter

what could our folks have had on their mind?

Pens of cattle, hogs not dear Kyiv cousins,

grins not groans for Rogers Park preteens.

 

     (miasma of cruelty’s purpose)

     (to break a peoples’ spirit)

   

When we unearthed the bloodbath’s facts

sighs of relief became embarrassed stutters.

Children left to fathom a world’s dread, 

parents’ silence a kindly confusing legacy.

 

     (what are parents thinking now?)

     (telling kids about Gaza now?)

Corey Weinstein’s poetry has been published in Haight Asbury Literary Journal, Vistas and Byways, The New Verse News, Our California 2024, The Ekphrastic Review, Forum (City College of San Francisco), California State Poetry Society, Visitant, Abandoned Mine, Speak Poetry of San Mateo County, California State Poetry Society and Jewish Currents, and he wrote and performed a singspiel called Erased: Babi Yar, the SS and Me. In his free time, he hosts San Francisco OLLI’s Poetry Workshop Circle and plays the clarinet in his local jazz band, Tandem, his synagogue choir and woodwind ensembles.

THEN THEY WERE MINE

by Corey Weinstein

Witnesses say that the IDF is deliberately killing Palestinians at aid distribution centres in Gaza run by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Cartoon by Muzaffar Yulchiboev.

Israeli plan for forced transfer of Gaza’s population ‘a blueprint for crimes against humanity’ —The Guardian, July 7, 2025

Hear it right here. The past is now,
but wrong place, wrong people.
Last time they were mine, desperate,
last gasp assault in Spring of ’43.
 
Wrong place, the Mideast, wronged Palestinians.
Is there dignity not victory for a vanquished people?
In ’43 we yelled into the Nazi tornado,
death throes of the Warsaw Ghetto 300,000.
 
Feeble return fire from a vanquished people.
As Gaza starves, the West Bank terrorized,
famine, genocide of Gaza’s ghetto of two million.
Will the end game be the same weak thrust and slaughter?
 
Tanks fire on the hungry, settlers smash homes, olive groves.
In Warsaw they were mine, Jews to the very last bullet.
Will the world let the endgame be the same last bullet,
can our ears bear to hear the past in this terrible now?
 
As for me, I will never forget, Never Again, 
no matter who, no matter where or when.

Corey Weinstein’s poetry has been published in Haight Asbury Literary Journal, Vistas and Byways, The New Verse News, Our California 2024, The Ekphrastic Review, Forum (City College of San Francisco), California State Poetry Society, Visitant, Abandoned Mine, Speak Poetry of San Mateo County, California State Poetry Society and Jewish Currents, and he wrote and performed a singspiel called Erased: Babi Yar, the SS and Me. He is a retired physician and has been an advocate for prisoner rights, founded California Prison Focus, and he led the American Public Health Association’s Prison Committee for many years. In his free time, he hosts San Francisco OLLI’s Poetry Workshop Circle and plays the clarinet in his local jazz band, Tandem, his synagogue choir and woodwind ensembles.

DON’T MOURN THE THORNS

by Corey Weinstein

Did you smile, even laugh aloud,

A smirk tumbling out of simmering glee?

Yes I was among the first 26,743,226

to feel joy when Notre Dame burned,

A spire collapsed shooting fireballs

through the attic, crashing the crosses,

Yellow flames licked the towers

and tickled my giggle bone,

 

From what abominations the fire sparked?

Of what burnt and musty stench like earth

where children are buried unmarked?

Rats running from their snuggle spots,

The ancient rot to their liking,

Dirty sins in the Savior’s name purified

Plastic icons oozed and bubbled black,

and is the toxic smoke pleasing to God?

 

The grand Dame’s construction marked

two hundred years of persecution

of expulsion, return and expulsion.

Built on the bones and bank notes 

of two centuries of violation,

feeding off the destruction

and exile of the Jews.

 

I won’t be contributing to the Church

where kings were crowned,

Where the crown of thorns stands in state.

Ask me again when plans include

a health center for family planning

and care for survivors of priestly abuse.

 

My joy only muted by the despair of the faithful

and knowing the stinking thing will rise as before.

Corey Weinstein’s poetry has been published in Vistas and Byways, The New Verse News, Our California 2024, The Ekphrastic Review, Forum (City College of San Francisco), California State Poetry Society, Visitant, Abandoned Mine, Speak Poetry of San Mateo County, California State Poetry Society and Jewish Currents, and he wrote and performed a singspiel called Erased: Babi Yar, the SS and Me.  He has been an advocate for prisoner rights and founded California Prison Focus, and he led the American Public Health Association’s Prison Committee for many years. In his free time, he hosts San Francisco OLLI’s Poetry Interest Group and plays the clarinet in his local jazz band, Tandem, his synagogue choir and woodwind ensembles.

THE AWNING OF AMERICA: THE MUG SHOT

by Corey Weinstein

Sculpted on the dreams of a silver spooned boy

Forged in the hallways of opulence and ease

He put the pomp in pompadour

Traded pomade for hair spray

Built a coiffure to cover his skin head

                                shade his shifty eyes,

Homage to the hoody boys of the ‘50s,

But back rooms and board rooms

Be his back streets and card rooms

A greaser of palms, not petty grift, not of need

Money making money making money making money.

 

Millions love our boisterous belligerent ex-bully in chief,

From the streets of Virginia to ranches out west

Thousands gear up to carry the guns he points,

White men taste the blood lust of

Oklahoma City, Charlottesville, Pittsburg,

                              boom, crash, rat-a-tat-tat,

Bullets to hold off the onslaught of history,

Afraid to be like me, the only white guy

on the Fifty Four bus to Balboa BART,

While the gold tressed awning keeps 

the sun off a raccoon goggled tan,

His vision goes no further than the end 

of his marvelous marquee, sprayed stiff canopy

sharp, slicing through reason, challenging democracy. 

Corey Weinstein’s poetry has been published in Vistas and Byways, The New Verse News, Forum (City College of San Francisco), California State Poetry Society, Abandoned Mineand Jewish Currents, and he wrote and performed a singspiel called Erased: Babi Yar, the SS and Me. He is an advocate for prisoner rights and founded California Prison Focus, and he led the American Public Health Association’s Prison Committee for many years. In his free time, he plays the clarinet in a local jazz band, his synagogue choir and woodwind ensembles.  

90TH BIRTHDAY IN KYIV

by Corey Weinstein

In just four weeks in the summer of 1941 the German Wehrmacht wrought unprecedented destruction on four Soviet armies, conquering central Ukraine and killing or capturing three-quarters of a million men. This was the battle of Kyiv–one of the largest and most decisive battles of World War II and, for Hitler and Stalin, a battle of crucial importance. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war were taken in the aftermath of the battle of Kiev, but very few would survive German captivity. —Arthur Grimm, “Kiev 1941: Hitler's Battle for Supremacy in the East,” Semantic Scholar

I live in a breadbasket,

That’s the whole problem,

Fields of wheat, of barley

for the soup the family loves,

Carrots, onions, meat scraps

or beets for borscht that stains,

Blood reluctantly on our hands.

None of them: the Whites, the Reds,

the Iron Crossed Pure Whites,

the new Green with wallets and promises,

None of them know our voices,

taste our beautiful farms,

Now still again the Reds attack,

and we are stained again

with what must be done,

I was nine standing at the pit’s edge,

Some cheered, not me, some retched,

The ground heaved and belched for a week,

Father cooked their lunches, never recovered,

A drunk in Kyiv gutter dirty to the end.

Again the shrieks of bombs and moms,

Blasts and dust and blood in the air,

These Reds of famine and orders and lies

roll over our wintered earth to plant

their seeds of our despair, now still again.

Corey Weinstein is a retired homeopathic physician whose poetry has been published in Vistas and Byways, The New Verse News, Forum, California State Poetry Society, and Jewish Currents. He currently attends writing classes at Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in San Francisco and hosts their Poetry Circle. Weinstein has also been published in a number of medical/academic publications. He was an advocate for prisoner rights as the founder of California Prison Focus, and he led the American Public Health Association’s Prison Committee for many years. In his free time, he plays the clarinet in a local jazz band, his synagogue choir and woodwind ensembles.  

PYROCENE THIS TIME

by Corey Weinstein

 

Nowhere winds bluster cloudless skies

blistering skins of rattle-windowed homes,

The parched air bites through wilted gardens,

Dry lightning judges the boiling world,

Heaven’s fiery tongues crackle the air

that booms the world without drenching grace,

Bestowing 8,000 square mile conflagrations,

Gaia’s retribution for dragging incendiaries

up from her breast with mine and pump,

Ripping off mountain tops, greasing her fissures,

Terra not Firma shakes our foundations.

 

Who is this people, these fire starters

that bespoil their nest and neighbor’s land?

In bands they were heroes of ice time survival

in pleasant harmony with their birthing world,

Now their fires are hidden in machines,

Personal aluminum hundred horse teams.

              Firepower unbound

                              Industrial pyro-pathologies

 Burning day and night

                      Blind to deluge and drought

                 Billions          Coal

     Tons             Gallons               Gas

           Billions     Daily     Billions!    

                Unimaginable bounty

                  Essential inferno.

 

A world melting into a grandchild’s future.

Corey Weinstein is a retired physician whose poetry has been published in Vistas and Byways, The New Verse News, Forum, and Jewish Currents. He currently attends writing classes at Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in San Francisco and hosts their Poetry Circle. Weinstein has also been published in a number of medical/academic publications. He is an advocate for prisoner rights as the founder of California Prison Focus, and he led the American Public Health Association’s Prison Committee for many years. In his free time, he plays the clarinet in a local jazz band.

SHELTER II

by Corey Weinstein

    at the foot of Sinai

Meandering through our sheltered lives of isolation
A fortnight and forty nine mark the days of our trek
Weeks weeping with news, sidewalks burdened by tents
Safer than starving migrant workers tramping home
More generous than gang youth herded into gladiator pits
Than daughters crying goodbye through computer screens
This trudge of my safety through a retreat of comfort
I look to those who have endured decades locked
down in eight by ten concrete and steel tombs
They at my right arm of justice, left of compassion
My teachers of confinement, five decades at their knee
Bang on my pipe, whisper somethings into my vent
Fly me a kite on a string through others’ hands
Design my program from wake up to bed down
Rise for tea and slow stretch and slower meditation
Gratitude, healing, love, praise, respect for the elders
Eat, walk, write, trash, eat, read, tidy, rehearse, eat,
dishes, news, read, TV, lockup, gray head weekly shop
Make sure the canteen is paid up and shelves are full
Decaf black, Rooibos, Hawthorne, Lemon Verbena
Sleepy Time, chocolate, hummus, cabernet—the essentials
Make sure the letters are written, calls made, people loved.
Boredom, comfort and routine seem too much the same
As the new moon brings us cowering to the foot of Sinai
We descendants of Noah through Shem enter full footed into
hallways of the breathless dying, and acres of coffin digs
More black men officially murdered, again and again
Exploding into the rage of youth, of those left further behind
How can we find the radiance borne of inner wisdom, of hope
Of gratitude or new knowledge, of being touched by the ineffable
We cover up while societies are unmasked, still and always
Worse for the worst off, and not so good for me either.

Corey Weinstein is a retired physician who works for the human rights of prisoners. He is founder of California Prison Focus that advocates for prisoners in long term solitary confinement. He has published two CDs of music largely inspired by the klezmer and Yiddish stage musical traditions and has written and produced a play in song staged in 2016 in commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the massacre at Babi Yar. His poetry has been published in Jewish Currents, Vista and Byways, and Forum (City College of San Francisco).