J.I. Kleinberg
J.I. Kleinberg is an artist, poet, freelance writer, and three-time Pushcart nominee. Her poetry has appeared in print and online journals and anthologies worldwide. In addition to Sleeping Lessons (Milk & Cake Press, 2025), her chapbooks include The Word for Standing Alone in a Field (Bottlecap Press, 2023), How to pronounce the wind (Paper View Press, 2023), and Desire’s Authority (Ravenna Press Triple Series No. 23, 2023). A full-length volume of visual poems, She needs the river (Poem Atlas) was published in 2024. She lives in Bellingham, Washington, USA, and on Instagram @jikleinberg.
Getting the news
Once, twice, many times removed
from the pain, I read the news
that has traveled from the place
where the bullet parted the boy’s ribs
or the bomb tumbled from the drone
to crush a roof over sleeping infants.
A camera saw it, or a crouching girl,
who told her sister, who still had
one bar on her phone and texted
her cousin. Pixel by pixel the story
spread: reporter, radio, printing press,
paper rolled in its plastic bag
waiting for me as I begin my day,
consider the weather, listen for
the gasp of the coffee pot, safe here
in a northern city in a messy pageant
of a nation. I have lain awake wondering
how the catastrophe will look
when it arrives, whether I will cower
and comply or spew curses
or if I will scream or hide or run
to the rescue of someone else.
How will I know what to do when
the graffiti stains my wall, when
the name called is my own, and what can
all the news, all our history, do for us now?
