Philly Poetry Chapbook Review is pleased to present Frances Klein’s poem “Targeted” as our third monthly featured poem from a full-length book for Issue 11: Winter 2026. You can find more poetry in her book, Another Life, available from Riot in Your Throat Press.
Targeted
They are interspersed among
the staged-candid shots
and artfully lit sushi plates—
clothing ads where bow-bellied women
place protective hands on the bump,
hospital video spots where a squalling newborn
is laid on his stunned father’s chest—
all your views and purchases and split-second
pauses while scrolling have red-ringed
a target around your open wound.
Negative pregnancy tests clutter the bin
and suddenly the internet is a minefield—
you tread carefully through vacation photos
to the left, girls’ nights to the right,
but one wrong step triggers a diaper ad,
a dimpled little guy, all brown eyes and curls,
and the aftermath of the detonation is less
like having the wind knocked out of you,
more like scanning the tree line
to see where your lungs landed.
People tell you, patly, to get off
social media, so you do, but the rest
of the internet is still out there,
and these days you can’t opt out
of online, so maybe the day
is going fine—your students are working
and chatting and singing along
with Totally ’90s Pandora,
but there’s a sniper on the roof—
the ad break is coos and gurgles
and Protect the skin you love most
with Eucerin and you can’t
breathe and you can’t
leave and you can’t remember
what the kid just asked you
so they repeat it then repeat it again,
and the rest of the day is hazy
while you keep pressure
on the bleeding.
Bit by bit you build your camouflage,
change your gender on every account
you can think of, decline all cookies,
browse incognito, leave
your phone in the car
when you have to buy anything
that might read as feminine
(the list is a mystery—
tampons, of course, or makeup, but
paper towels? Tangerines? Triple A batteries?).
You open Playboy and ESPN
on three different devices
and scroll while you watch TV,
constructing an impenetrable carapace.
Now when the shots are fired,
they go wide, watches and Wranglers,
dick pills and protein powder.
Eventually, the internet is an escape
once again from the crack shots
and stray grenades of the real world.
And are you happy? Of course not.
And are you safe? Of course not,
no one promised any of those things
to anyone in life. All you can do
is harden the target.
(This poem was first published by Dead Letter Radio.)
About the Poem
I wrote ‘Targeted’ as part of a series of poems reflecting on the experience of infertility. The poem focuses specifically on the way that online algorithms ‘read’ a person’s internet history related to pregnancy or trying to conceive, then deliver the most painful possible ads and content with all the accuracy of a trained sniper.
The poem opens the second section of my book Another Life, one of the sequences in the collection that explores the infertility and pregnancy loss experience. I chose it to open that section of the book because I felt that the poem captures the isolation many people feel as they deal with infertility, a space where even mindlessly scrolling on social media is no longer a respite.
Author Bio
Frances Klein is an Alaskan poet and teacher. Klein is the author of several poetry chapbooks, including The Best Secret (Bottlecap Press, 2021), New and Permanent (Blanket Sea Press, 2021), and (Text) Messages from The Angel Gabriel (Gnashing Teeth Press, 2024). Another Life is her first full length collection. Klein’s writing has appeared in Best Microfictions, The Harvard Advocate, The London Magazine, HAD, and others. She lives in Southeast Alaska with her husband and son.
From Another Life
I Have Never Wanted Another Life is a collection of poems that circle motherhood and all it entails, its hopes and its horrors. It’s about the life chosen and the life left unlived. Frances Klein takes the reader on a journey through both the pain and the pleasure in the paths followed. Each poem carries the reader a little further forward but doesn’t stop them from looking back and wondering What if? These poems explore memory and history and future and dreams, they delve into desire in all its forms and ask questions that linger long after you’ve read them. I Have Never Wanted Another Life allows the reader to wonder at all that could have been while remaining grateful for all that is.
Available now: Riot in Your Throat Press
Contents
“Managing [my husband’s] pain became fraught in the last week of his life when he could no longer swallow the medications that had kept him comfortable…The poem explores the vulnerability and intimacy found in such a crisis.” Read five poems by Amy Riddell, our first biweekly poet of the Winter 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Reading the Body.”
Chapbook Poem: Aphasia by Robert Allen
“Ultimately this is a poem of love and recognition, of finding the right words for the right listener, to the one who listens and understands.” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for January 2026, “Aphasia,” along with a few words from the poet.
Book Excerpt: The Egg of Anything by Paula Bohince
“The poem is filled with moments of ‘O’ sounds and ‘Ah’ sounds, mimicking the O of the egg and the Ah of the open jaw. I like that the poem is compact in its little form, also a bit egg-like.” Read the featured Excerpt Poem of the Month for January 2026, “The Egg of Anything” from A Violence by Paula Bohince, along with a few words from the poet.
Three Poems by Abraham Aondoana
“Instead of providing any solution to the issue, the poem is ready to be open to the ambiguity that can enable doubt, tenderness, and resilience to co-exist. By so doing, it points to survival not as victory, but as endurance…” Read three poems by Abraham Aondoana, our second biweekly poet of the Winter 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Surviving a Country That is Also a Question.”
Five Poems by Colleen S. Harris
“I am always struck by the juxtaposition of the biology and science of illness versus the life of the person living with it, and how those two spheres constantly interrupt and flow into each other.” Read five poems by Colleen S. Harris, our third biweekly poet of the Winter 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Inflammation As Girl.”
Chapbook Poem: Offering by Richard Jordan
“In my mind, the narrator recognizes that Harper’s fate could very well have been his own, and I hope that readers can relate, in the sense that we all have done reckless things, especially in our youth…” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for February 2026, “Offering,” along with a few words from the poet.
Book Excerpt: Passage by Paul Hostovsky
“When she’d call me on the weekends, I was high half the time, impatient with her, and unforthcoming. It’s one of my greatest regrets. The tears well up just thinking about it. I didn’t grieve her properly. I’m grieving her now.” Read the featured Excerpt Poem of the Month for February 2026, “Passage” from Perfect Disappearances by Paul Hostovsky, along with a few words from the poet.
“The poem captures us both there in the dreaded check up appointment: me clenching crinkling paper, scared of what the lab reports say; him…lab reports in hand like some mysterious document…” Read three poems by Mary Whitlow, our fourth biweekly poet of the Winter 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Examined.”
February ’26: Section Editors & Staff Wanted
Editor Aiden Hunt begins year three with a call for applications for section editors and other editorial and production staff in this editor’s note.
“I am most comfortable in a chair with a pen looking at nature through a window. And yet nature is something my mind is also totally immersed in…So I think it’s a bit of a paradox.” Poet Lisa Low discusses her latest chapbook in this interview with Contributor Saudamini Siegrist.
“My work has always found a focus in the bodies of women, and watching the mix of strength and fragility in women as they face illness and pain has been a topic that I keep coming back to.” Read four poems by Betty Stanton, our fifth biweekly poet of the Winter 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Vein Song.”
Chapbook Poem: Found in the African Art Collection… by Rohanna Ssanyu
“It is laborious to hold on to a culture removed, one for which I am a perpetual novice. I do, however, try, and I bring my children with me. … Can this space, this culture, only be ours if cut up and reimagined?” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for March 2026, “Found in the African Art Collection of a New Haven Gallery After the Guard Asks Whether My Son Knows the Rules,” along with a few words from the poet.
Book Excerpt: Targeted by Frances Klein
“The poem focuses specifically on the way that online algorithms ‘read’ a person’s internet history related to pregnancy or trying to conceive, then deliver the most painful possible ads…” Read the featured Excerpt Poem of the Month for March 2026, “Targeted” from Another Life by Frances Klein, along with a few words from the poet.