Mistee St. Clair wants to give you, one of her favorite poets, a hug
but she is busy dodging avalanches and asked me
to hug in absentia. Can we take a picture?
Maybe people will stand around us and video
you giving me a hug for Mistee to be featured
in the New York Times as counterpoint
to hugs with handcuffs. Hugs with bite
and shove. Our hug will be cashmere,
will embrace the pain in five places:
One place for a sister, left a note
that didn’t apologize. Another for a son who
evaporated with needles. Jenn Martelli,
died too young. The assassinated in a car window,
on a sidewalk. Your immigrant and mine, disappeared.
United States of Hatred standing
on a street corner, weeping. Full-bodied
close-knit hugs. Inspirational arms gift wrapped.
Phyllis Klein is a psychotherapist and poet living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Verse Daily, Sweet Lit, 3Elements, I-70, The Minnesota Review, and Swwim Everyday, among many others. She was a finalist in the 2017 Sweet Poetry Contest, the 2019 Carolyn Forché Humanitarian Poetry Contest, and the 2019 Fischer Prize. Her first book, The Full Moon Herald, a poetry newspaper from Grayson Books (2020), was awarded an Honorable Mention Prize for the 2021 Eric Hoffer Book Award. During the pandemic she started a reading called Poets in Conversation. She’s currently working on a second manuscript.
Read other Letters to America online or in Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy, published in partnership with Trinity University Press.
Header photo of the sculpture Reconciliation (Josefina de Vasconcellos, 1977) by wal_172619, courtesy Pixabay.
