C’MON PEOPLE NOW, SMILE ON YOUR BROTHER, EVERYBODY GET TOGETHER AND IMPEACH THAT MOTHERFUCKER RIGHT NOW

by Phyllis Klein

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.

ANTI-WAR RALLY

A Correspondence

by Phyllis Klein, Kathy Les, and Renée Schell

KYIV, Ukraine — Makeshift roadblocks have been installed throughout this capital to impede the movements of Russian troops snaking toward the city in a convoy about 15 miles away. On some strategic thruways, Ukrainians have parked trams and buses to restrict driving access. Checkpoints to inspect IDs have also been established to root out would-be saboteurs. “We have a lot of presents” for the Russians, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in an interview. “It’s not sweet. It’s very painful.” The extended 40-mile parade of Russian armored vehicles, tanks and towed artillery headed from the north on a path toward Kyiv has both alarmed and befuddled watchers of this expanding war. It’s not just its sheer size. It’s also because for days, it has not appreciably been moving. U.S. officials attribute the apparent stall in part to logistical failures on the Russian side, including food and fuel shortages, that have slowed Moscow’s advance through various parts of the country. They have also credited Ukrainian efforts to attack selected parts of the convoy with contributing to its slowdown. Still, officials warn that the Russians could regroup at any moment and continue to press forward. —The Washington Post, March 7, 2022

Dear Friends,

I send my love this spring as every

day a new trauma comes

to bury us just as we climb out 

of yesterday’s avalanche. Even here in 

the flatlands, sidewalks seem to turn

into wet clay, our feet leaving prints

that suck my shoes into glue-like cement.

My heart muscles out its love 

to your hearts as I struggle 

to take a walk, no way to avoid those

cruel neighborhoods of bad news. 

How bad news molders in the streets of tar

and disappointment. Flat tires

and tire irons so easy to weaponize.

Trees blighted, only crows left.

Love watches a plague of human heartlessness

trying to destroy it. Love begs 

for combat boots, stands on the fire escape

outside its tenement of low income love-fires.

I say, Let them burn. To kindle what is lovely 

I send you them, the embers.

—Phyllis

***

Whose Spring?

Lately I wonder 

for whose sake 

the flowers bud, 

the trees open. 

I watch the oak tree 

two houses away, 

how it plumes wider 

a little more each day, 

its pent-up exhilaration 

to burst forth, readiness 

for another year 

of leafy dress. 

Two continents away, 

a 40-mile convoy 

of armored trucks 

stalled in unison, greedy 

to penetrate a capital city 

that not two weeks ago 

populated itself with people 

awaiting their next spring, 

a chance to shed 

the heavy cold,

wet nights. 

 

Now those nights 

are filled with embers, 

blasts big enough,

red enough to douse 

whatever hope 

was had for a new year. 

Whose war is this anyway. 

Whose spring? 

—Kathy

***

Sister Cities

U.S. Sister Cities Sever Relationships to Counterparts in RussiaUkraine—Bloomberg, March 4, 2022

Whose spring? 

Whose war?

Here we planted a new 

word for spring:

Weaponize

A word I don’t want 

to taste in my mouth.

When did that appear?

Daily, hourly

wherever you look

fear is weaponized

water is weaponized

tire irons weaponized

words always.

Here, our spring

promise of ranunculus

sky of water vapor

sky of plumes

sky of smoke

A 40-mile convoy stalled, 

headlights and taillights

a rifle barrel’s width apart

a push, a threat, a smack.

There, even the roads 

are weaponized 

not our hearts

never let it be our hearts

There, hearts are strewn 

on the road 

like spent bullets.

When do we learn that there 

contains here?

—Renée 

Phyllis Klein, Kathy Les, and Renée Schell are widely published poets connected through a poetry crafting group meeting on Zoom. They live in Palo Alto, San Jose, and Sacramento, CA respectively.  This conversation poem is one of many collaborations they hope to have.

MYANMAR MILITARY IN PURSUIT OF POETS

by Phyllis Klein

including two excerpts of incriminating lines

Poetry remains alive in Myanmar, where unconventional weapons are being used to fight a military that has killed more than 800 people since it staged a coup on Feb. 1 and ousted an elected government. For some democracy activists, their politics cannot be separated from their poetry. Sensing the power of carefully chosen words, the generals have imprisoned more than 30 poets since the putsch, according to the National Poets’ Union. At least four have been killed, all from the township of Monywa, which is nestled in the hot plains of central Myanmar and has emerged as a center of fierce resistance to the coup. Photo: Ko Chan Thar Swe, who had left the Buddhist monkhood to write poetry, was killed in March. —The New York Times, May 28, 2021

They shoot down hands filled with artilleries

of verse, beat up feet filing into lines

of protest. They shoot at heads

but they do not know that revolution 

lives in the heart. In darkness, in daylight,

minds and hearts bulleted, to make them 

stop. But no silence. Poetry sharpens its quills, 

aims arrows into its targets. They began to burn 

the poets when the smoke of burned books could

no longer choke the lungs heavy with dissent. 

Now their smoke is everywhere as poets are doused

and matched. And still they write. Scratch words 

into cell walls with rocks, or with metal on plastic— 

bitter-cold vinyl ballads. Or memorized signposts

of the mind, indelible. Troubadours of protest 

in waves of heat. In monsoons on horizons. 

On every street in the world. Pursued by silver-ribboned 

militias climbing up a tyrannical ladder. Nibs filled 

with poison-to-the-wicked-ink. Fingerprints cupping my

face, your face, walls of alarms clanging 

against silence, revolutions of clocks’ hands.

Phyllis Klein’s work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She is a finalist in the Sweet Poetry Contest, 2017, the Carolyn Forche Humanitarian Poetry Contest, 2019, and the Fischer Prize, 2019. She was nominated for a Pushcart prize in 2018 and again in 2020. She has a new book, The Full Moon Herald, from Grayson Books that just won honorable mention for poetry from the Eric Hoffer Book Award, 2021. Living in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 30 years, she sees writing as artistic dialogue between author and readers—an intimate relationship-building process that fosters healing on many levels.

TO KNOW A MONARCH

by Phyllis Klein

To know it only as a photograph, a memory.

Never to witness again a community of millions clustered 

on Eucalyptus branches, now empty.

These fragile slivers of stained glass

no longer clinging to winter respites.

What is a world that would allow

this extravagant pollinator to die off?

This migrational miracle. 

Rumi says, You were born 

with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?

I want a humanity that weeps 

copiously for this animal who starts off 

in a crawl, shows us how to fly. I want

processions, dirges everywhere,

want to howl over milkweed, bereft, without 

purpose. So much loss. I want to rend my garments.

Burn kaleidoscopes of butterflies into my skin.

What good would that do? Or I could slice

open the sky, so their ghosts torrent down. 

What do I know of softness—my origins 

in an ice-house, in a tradition of cruelty,

of abhorration, torn appendages. Where

are the wings for this? Where the flashes 

of orange slipped through our fingers?

Phyllis Klein’s work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She is a finalist in the Sweet Poetry Contest, 2017, the Carolyn Forché Humanitarian Poetry Contest, 2019, and the Fischer Prize, 2019. She was nominated for a Pushcart prize in 2018 and again in 2020. She has a new book, The Full Moon Herald  from Grayson Books. Living in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 30 years, she sees writing as artistic dialogue between author and readers—an intimate relationship-building process that fosters healing on many levels. 

I WISH WE COULD ZIP UP THE ELECTION BY TUESDAY

by Phyllis Klein

Trump Zipper published October 31, 2018 by R.J. Matson politicalcartoons.com

I love the zippers in my life,

on skirts, pants, purses.

I even have a dress with three

large silver ones on the diagonal 

across my chest, torso, hips.

Me, as master of my universe,

pulling the tabs open or closed,

the teeth as they fall into a chain line

like a basketball team or a ballet troupe.

Connecting me to the openings and closings

of  the day, to other zippers and zipperers

everywhere. Oh if only everyone could fall

into a compassionate line, close out the cruelties,

open up for human rights, and critical care 

for the Earth. If money wasn’t the only thing. 

If coming together could win the day.

Phyllis Klein’s work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She is a finalist in the Sweet Poetry Contest, 2017, the Carolyn Forché Humanitarian Poetry Contest, 2019, and the Fischer Prize, 2019. She was nominated for a Pushcart prize in 2018 and again in 2020. She has a new book, The Full Moon Herald from Grayson Books. Living in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 30 years, she sees writing as artistic dialogue between author and readers—an intimate relationship-building process that fosters healing on many levels. 

CALIFORNIA SEPTEMBER 2020 WAITING FOR RAIN

by Phyllis Klein

Says the Climate Arsonist, “It will start getting cooler. You just watch,” as he participates in a briefing on wildfires with California Governor Gavin Newsom, left, at Sacramento McClellan Airport, Monday, 14 September 2020. Source: AAP via SBS News.

Any way you look at it, things are pretty grim.
Even an optimist (not me) has uplifted about as much
as they could, and still the rivers with their

muddy waters lope over the banks of hope,
stranding us in a flood of bad news. But no showers,
no torrents in sight. The lens of the future

becomes a Picasso painted kaleidoscope.
Rocks from an ominous silted riverbottom sink
even lower, lugging words, thoughts,

images down. Paperweighted laments underwater.
But the truth is so dry. See it coast past the window saying,
Get used to this. The sun must be angry,

or maybe it’s goldening another planet
with better behaved inhabitants. Or maybe
it’s the air, beyond rage, depressed, grieving, draped

in its gray facade. Eventually the situation blurs
into a barrier, a dam, a kink in the hose, pressure
on the rise. Combustion on its warpath.


Phyllis Klein writes, lives, and works in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Silver Birch Press, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, TheNewVerse.News, Chiron Review, Portside, and Sweet, a Literary Confection. She also has poems forthcoming in I-70 and 3Elements. She believes in artistic dialogue as an intimate relationship-building process that fosters healing on many levels. And the healing power of anything as beautiful as poetry.

BREATH OF DAMNATION

by Phyllis Klein

Plenty of people in The City, including this man walking on Market Street, donned a mask Friday due to bad air quality as smoke from the Camp Fire in Northern California drifts down into the Bay Area 2018. (Kevin N. Hume/S.F. Examiner, November 10, 2018)

After the fire fractures its invisible
borders, the air going south becomes
a death powder. The Anna’s hummingbirds,

white-breasted nuthatches, the western
meadowlarks all disappear as if the atmosphere
pushes them indoors. Ominous vapors grab

oranges on their bushes with fingers visible
as ghosts in a dimly lit room. The sun, our lady
of perpetual light, glares down through a haze,

murky blue. Nothing wet. Or shiny. The dirt
tries to move, no wind, no dust, only rocklike
rusty brown with cracks.  Everyone knows this

feeling, a drought, field drained of water,
perdition place of nightmares. Here it is: our
dread of Hades, right outside the window, real

enough to taste, to smell.

Phyllis Klein writes, lives, and works in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Silver Birch Press, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, TheNewVerse.News, Chiron Review, Portside, and Sweet, a Literary Confection. She also has poems forthcoming in I-70 and 3Elements. She believes in artistic dialogue as an intimate relationship-building process that fosters healing on many levels. And the healing power of anything as beautiful as poetry.

A COMPASSIONATE JUDGE AT THE VETERANS COURT

by Phyllis Klein


   

   “It was more of a father-son conversation. It was personal.”

The Washington Post, April 22, 2016

And so, when the judge
gets into the cell
with the man he has just sentenced
to twenty-four hours in jail,
the man asks, “For the whole day?”
and the judge says,
“Yeah, that’s what I’m doing.”

Like a father who says,
“He’s my son and I won’t see him fall."
And a son who isn’t alone
locked down in the dark with his terror.

Because the judge has been to war, too,
and knows there are wounds
that aren’t visible. Because the man,
two decades in the military, knows
another soldier died for him in combat
and lives crushed under this,
and not only this.

And a judge can be a brother
to a man who has lost his way,
as two oak trees in a meadow
can be connected by their roots.
The way a man who has lost
his way can be a messenger
to remind us
there is so much more to know
about what’s on the inside.

Because we are so ready
to skate on the surface
of our minds. Because
we can do so much more
to be relatives in the fields        
of trees, beauty,
and devastation we call home.

Phyllis Klein believes in poetry. Her work has appeared in the Pharos of Alpha Omega Medical Society Journal,  Qarrtsiluni, Silver Birch Press, The Four Seasons Anthology, TheNewVerse.News, and is forthcoming in Crosswinds Poetry Journal and Chiron Review. She is very interested in the conversation between poets and readers of poetry. She sees artistic dialogue as an intimate relationship-building process that fosters healing on many levels. She lives and works in the San Francisco Bay area as a psychotherapist and poetry therapist.

AFTER MY FRIEND ROSEMERRY WRITES ABOUT FAILURE AND MERCY

by Phyllis Klein

Aboriginal Brass Band Offers Burst of Hope in a Bleak Community
—NY Times, Jan. 24, 2016

I write back to tell her
about the Brass Band revival
in Yarrabah, Australia. How Anglicans
made the mistake of dragging Aboriginals
over to their mission and forced
them to labor in the 1890s.
How their children got yanked off
into dormitories, stripped
of their culture and language
like saplings with the wrong kind of bark.

Again, this white failure to understand
how the harness of racism
traps us all in a world without mercy.
Again, this felling of trees
in a forest already depleted and suffering.
Rosemerry, I say, I couldn’t ever believe 
in a journey from revulsion to hope.
But look, I say, but look, 
right here in the New York Times,
even this story has one slice of sun 
in the chapel of despair—the Brass Band. 
Listen, can you hear it as background
for Christian hymns, its instruments
able to withstand humidity
and heat, the music shimmying up tree trunks
into bluesy sky, unable to be enslaved.

And here is the band coming
out of its silence of fifty years.
Here is Greg Fourmile on euphonium
and Paul Neal, tenor sax,
didn’t know how to clap to rhythm,
let alone make music. Here are
the school kids and the grandmothers of Yarrabah
doing the best they can
to take the beat of healing into their hearts and ours.

They play for us, for everyone
who wants pride to replace shame,
for the terrible things we have done
and had done to us, and the need to go on.
For the meanness of power
and the sirens of greed.
For the insistence on healing,
the reforestation of what has been cut
but not destroyed.


Author’s Note: This poem was written in response to a poem by Rosemerry Trommer published in Rattle, Poets Respond.

Phyllis Klein believes in poetry. Her work has appeared in the Pharos of Alpha Omega Medical Society Journal, Emerge, Qarrtsiluni, Silver Birch Press, and The Four Seasons Anthology (Hurricane Press, 2015). She is very interested in the conversation between poets and readers of poetry. She sees artistic dialogue as an intimate relationship-building process that fosters healing on many levels. She lives and works in the San Francisco Bay area as a psychotherapist and poetry therapist.