Elise Kazanjian: Reading at Bird & Beckett book store in San Francisco

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A Letter to country singer Alexis Wilkins, girl friend of Kash Patel, Trump’s FBI Director

Dear Alexis,

I am so happy that your boyfriend Kash Patel has assigned special FBI Swat teams to protect you because as we all know country singers lead very dangerous lives. You travel to your performances on private planes paid by tax dollars so it doesn’t cost you a cent. I now know why in your song, the one you call “Stand” you sing “Thank God I live in the USA”.

Over your morning coffee, Kash probably apologizes that he’s busier than ever because he moved 20% of the FBI’s work force from crime to immigration enforcement, and is deeply involved with the Department of Homeland Security. The DHS is detaining some 70,000 people in jails across the country. 23 immigrants have already died in custody.

You and Kash, no doubt, are concerned about the four thousand children in detention centers. Code violations are rampant at these centers. Last summer, the Republican controlled Congress gave DHS forty five billion dollars to build more jails.

I am sure you are very proud of your boyfriend who promised to shut down FBI Bureau headquarters and reopen it, “As a museum of the deep state.” I’d appreciate it if you would ask Kash, or do you playfully call him Cash with a capital C, what that means— the FBI Bureau as “a museum of the deep state.”

I won’t bore you with more questions—you have important things to do, and are probably tired from all that traveling in private planes.

Stay well, yours truly,

Elise Kazanjian

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We

With gratitude to Gwendolyn Brooks, “We Real Cool, The Pool Players Seven At The Golden Shovel”, banned in Mississippi and West Virginia because her line “We Jazz June” was considered sexual. Brooks, a Pulitzer Prize winning poet, was the first African American appointed Poet Laureate of the United States.


We pick our fights. We
march for rights. We

thousands strong. We
replace wrong. We

evict Trump. We
dump the chump. We

Really great. We
Talk straight. We

Ain’t out of gas. We
Gonna kick ass.

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Copyright 2026 Elise Kazanjian

Elise Kazanjian is a San Francisco poet/writer who spent her childhood in Northern China. She has worked at Sunset Magazine; as Foreign Editor, CCTV, Beijing, China; and as a San Francisco pawnbroker.