TO A COMMERCIAL JUDGE

by Francisco de Quevedo (Spain, 1580–1645)

translation by Julie Steiner

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito did not disclose luxury gifts from GOP mega-donors, including Alito's Alaskan fishing trip, or recuse themselves from cases the donors had before the court. [...] Last July, after Alito wrote the Dobbs decision, he was a keynote speaker at a gala in Rome with the trip paid for by Notre Dame University Religious Liberty Initiative. He hadn’t disclosed that either, or recused himself from any of the multiple cases RLI had filed ‘friends-of-the-court’ briefs with. Ruling in Alito’s favor has been his fellow Justice Clarence Thomas who has been feted with financial favors from billionaire and GOP mega-donor Harlan Crow. Those favors include Crow buying Thomas’ Mother’s home, which she still resides in, and also paying Thomas’ grandnephew’s tuition while he was in his care. The Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 23, 2023

A corrupted, partisan United States Supreme Court is how we will lose our democracy. —Mike Davey, The Miami Herald via Yahoo! News, June 25, 2024

The laws in which your court, Batino, deals
you’re less inclined to study than to vend.
They buy you things: that’s all you comprehend.
To you, the Fleece—not Jason*—is what appeals.
Your take on laws of man and God reveals
that either sort you rule on, you offend.
Your grasping hand, preparing to extend,
foretells which way your judgment fails. (Er, falls.)
You don’t know how to hear a low-cost case.
Who gives to you receives doubt’s benefit.
Your side-deal contracts take the law-tracts’ place.
Since bias and bribes are vices you won’t quit,
go wash your hands with Pilate, or unlace
your purse with Judas and hang yourself with it.

Author's Note on Line 4: An Italian jurist named Giasone del Maino (1435-1519)—Jasón de Maino in Spanish—wrote widely influential legal commentaries, and is referenced in several Spanish dramas of this period. His legendary namesake Jason led the Argonauts in search of the ram that bore the Golden Fleece.

A UN JUEZ MERCADERÍA

por Francisco de Queveda (España, 1580–1645)

Las leyes con que juzgas, ¡oh Batino!,
menos bien las estudias que las vendes;
lo que te compran solamente entiendes;
más que Jasón te agrada el Vellocino.
El humano derecho y el divino,
cuando los interpretas, los ofendes,
y al compás que la encoges o la extiendes,
tu mano para el fallo se previno.
No sabes escuchar ruegos baratos,
y sólo quien te da te quita dudas;
no te gobiernan textos, sino tratos.
Pues que de intento y de interés no mudas,
o lávate las manos con Pilatos,
o, con la bolsa, ahórcate con Judas.

Francisco de Quevedo, one of the most famous poets of Spain's Golden Age (Siglo de Oro), wrote many savage caricatures of greedy lawyers and judges.

Julie Steiner is a pseudonym in San Diego, California. Besides The New Verse News, the venues in which Julie's poetry has appeared include The Able Muse Review, Rattle, Light, and The Asses of Parnassus.

THE CONSTITUTION AND A SPRIG OF RUE

by David Chorlton

     Clarence Thomas says American citizens are seemingly

     'more interested in their iPhones' than 'their Constitution'

 

Because an iPhone knows

the difference between a single-shot musket

and an automatic weapon;

because the Constitution never mentioned

an abortion but if you ask Siri

she will direct the question to a source explaining

the what and how of it; a source

incidentally unavailable in seventeen-eighty-seven.

One little know-all tablet

fitting comfortably in the hand

can tell you where to turn to reach a stated

destination, connect to the latest baseball scores,

and provide a recipe. But even an iPhone

can’t tell behind

which desk a pupil ought to shelter, or

where the emergency exit is

to get away from someone openly carrying.

Its time to reload

the letters in the Constitution’s “chuse”

with the neatly rounded “oo” that brings

choose up to modern usage.

Ask Siri when the wire coat hanger

was invented. She’ll say Eighteen sixty-nine.

For what was used in earlier

times, Benjamin Franklin advised the use

of an abortifacient to resolve

“the misfortune” of an unwanted pregnancy . . .

while an old Sephardic song

tells of Una Matica de Ruda, the sprig of rue

as a gift from the young man

who has fallen in love.

David Chorlton came to live in Arizona in 1978 and always loved the desert. The land has come to be a part of much of his writing, while other aspects of political and social life present more troubling questions. 

IF THIS WERE A SAM ALITO POEM

by Dick Westheimer

Learn to predict a fire with unerring precision.

Then burn down the house to fulfill the prediction.

—Czeslaw Milsoz

If this were a Sam Alito poem,  it would be written in tidy couplets, matched in beat and time. It would forget that words are born from grunts and battle cries, that swords decide which terms can be used and which are taboo, that the right to cleave your neighbor with a steel blade is her duty to bear Samuel’s baby, the one he so loves, the one that he is willing to render in tersets and turds, to bang and clang the lines into refrigerator magnets with the only words being “life” and “thoughts” and “and” and “prayers.”

If this were an Amy Coney Barrett poem, The First Word In Each Line Would Be  Capitalized, the lines themselves would neatly rhyme, would chime with the rhythm of the Sainted Ones, entrain with the iambs of a military parade—with goose-stepping Aunties’ heads and staffs held high, saluting to the the crowd of Commander’s wives in their hues of blue, and to the Guardians of the Right who know a thing or two about the bump and mad grind, about how we’re all inclined to naughty deeds with the lights turned off with a glory hole chemise cagoule between a woman and the beasts with their hairy parts and the beat of steeple-hatted bigots stomping time on courthouse floorboards.

If this were a Clarence Thomas poem, the meter will be trochee, a hammer hammer hammer double time.  It would be a sestina cycling lines of the before times when men were men and women were not, when guns were muskets and books were sewn with linen thread, when Coke cans shed the hair of the dog that bit us all, when what was written in the age of powdered wigs was wise and there would be a crowning of a New King who’d reign over a land where men who held hands with men were melted down into guns anointed by boys who’d hold lead to the heads of women great with child.

And if this were my poem, the verse would be blank, the words mute, the letters scattered across the page. The white space would be smudged with ash, the margins smudged with blood and pocked with powder burns. The verse would exercise its right to remain silent, cuffed to a chair, pregnant, with despair.

Dick Westheimer  has—with his wife and writing companion Debbie—lived on their plot of land in rural southwest Ohio for over 40 years. His most recent poems have recently appeared or are upcoming in Rattle, Paterson Review, Chautauqua Review, RiseUp Review, Ekphrastic Review, Minyan, Gyroscope Review, and Cutthroat.

JUSTICE, CLARENCE?

by Geoffrey Philp

Justice Clarence Thomas, hailed as the “brightest

possible northern star“ and lauded as a “legal titan”

prefers the sobriquet of Originalist, a justice intent

on reversing laws not explicit in the Constitution.

And while he remained quiet during oral arguments,

he’d been preparing tortured briefs against abortion

and affirmative action, which he called a threat

to the “notion of equality,” in his considered opinion.

But I wonder what the other black-robed justices think.

For at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia

Clarence would’ve been reduced to 3/5 of a man—

His marriage would’ve been ruled as miscegenation

His home surrounded by hooded men on horseback:

“Don’t be scared, ma’am. We’re just here for the n***er.”

Geoffrey Philp is the author of two novels, Garvey’s Ghost and Benjamin, my son,, three children’s books, including Marcus and the Amazons, and two collections of short stories. He has also published five books of poetry. His forthcoming books include a graphic novel for children titled My Name is Marcus and a collection of poems titled Archipelagos. His forthcoming poetry collection borrows from Kamau Brathwaite’s “Middle Passage” lecture, Aime Cesaire’s Discourse on Colonialism, Sylvia Wynter’s “1492,” and Amitav Ghosh’s thesis in The Nutmeg’s Curse to explore the relationship between Christianity, colonialism, and genocide. He is currently working on a collection of poems titled Letter from Marcus Garvey. He can be found on twitter and on instagram.

SCALY QUESTION

by Marcus Bales

Cartoon by Matt Bors via Daily Kos, Feb. 17, 2016

Scalia's gone ahead;
I'm bearing up dry-eyed.
I didn't wish him dead,
but I'm not sad he died.

At every human turn
within the legal fray
he mocked humane concern
and stood athwart the way.

He even said don't spend
on innocents' defense:
procedure's proper end
is killing innocents.

A creature of the right
he's now the devil's minion --
and say, who's going to write
Thomas's next opinion?


Not much is known about Marcus Bales, except that he lives in Cleveland, Ohio, and his poems have not been published in The New Yorker or Poetry.