say wind say blast
as the butterfly bush leans
towards the house in trembles
as the oak lays down
roots othered from soil
say Flow Santa Ana Sundowner
say fire say Camp Dixie Caldor
Eaton say rattles
and needles acorns popping
firecrackers say eagle screech
say raptor eyes orange crackle
smokey hisses into lungs
say asthma say haze
say rubble say death
they say drought
currents of reproach
on shrunken orange trees
they say it won’t rain
powdered earth is said to sneak
under screens underfoot scrape of dusty
bones on raw wooden floors
next year they say air-river
they say floods in basements
over riverbanks say El Niño
is Storm with troopers
of mud and boulders
said to hurl themselves off
mountains into whatever
else is on its way
—
Phyllis Klein is a psychotherapist and poet from the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including The Comstock Review, Sweet, 3Elements, I-70, The Minnesota Review, and Swwim Everyday, among many others. She was a finalist in the Sweet Poetry Contest (2017), the Carolyn Forché Humanitarian Poetry Contest (2019), and the Fischer Prize (2019). Her book, The Full Moon Herald, from Grayson Books (2020), has won poetry finalist from the Eric Hoffer Book Award (2021). During the Pandemic she started a reading called Poets in Conversation.
