THE SUPREME COURT COURTS ITS OWN SUPREMACY

A Modern Petrarchan Sonnet 

by Kimberly Russo

The Supreme Court on Friday reduced the authority of executive agencies, sweeping aside a longstanding legal precedent that required courts to defer to the expertise of federal administrators in carrying out laws passed by Congress. —The New York Times, June 28, 2024. Above is an excerpt from Justice Kagan’s dissent.

History names you as “Final Arbiter,”
To eagle-eye each branch, limit its power
and strike down laws in violation of our
country’s pact. You are humanity’s harbinger.
“EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW” leans starboard
erasing civil rights from their ivory tower
with six of nine lying disavowers
dumb to the public’s dreams dearly harbored.

All women, surrender your uterus,
lovers and race and Affirmative Action
flee in disgrace and die in the closet.
What ill minds embrace rulings ludicrous?
Judges, pious in self-satisfaction
perished in politics’ pockets, I posit.

Kimberly Russo is an English teacher in Aurora, Colorado where she resides with her husband, Tony.  She is the mother of four children, Nicholas (Stephanie,) Audrey, Grace, and Maritza, and grandmother to Doc Wilder and Willa Cassidy. Kimberly spends her free time gardening & bird-watching. Much of her writing is dedicated to marriage/family, social issues, including the perpetuating inequality among genders/races, and the stigma associated with mental illness. Her poetry has appeared in River Poets Journal, Open Minds Quarterly, PDXX Collective, Sixfold (Summer 2016,) Sixfold (Summer 2018,) Sixfold (Winter 2022,) Cricket Media: Spider Magazine, ACM, Another Chicago Magazine, and Backwards Trajectory.

JUSTICE IN TRIPLICATE

by Lavinia Kumar

Know the constitution is not just a ye-olde parchment scroll, it
Amplifies restraint of judicial roles, not an attempt to cover them in
Gown, black or white. Know congress not court make law. We
Angrily, we must, protect all American people knowing that in this
Number are color, gender, poverty, and most of all, reality.
 
Sickening is constitutional subversion rolling back racial equality
On the backs of spoiled children and mommies
Touting “unfairness” to a receptive group of
Outed outward rightists with no interest in settled law, nor
Maintaining a semblance of right. Where is Equal Protection against
Anchors around Black necks not just for
Years, but for decades, for centuries – such
Ongoing abuse, such dehumanizing lack of recognition of
Rights, yes, equal rights.  Right…
 
Just as ostriches in sand, some justices in a white marble palace wish
Away race, inequality, lack of opportunity in a
Collective blindness that racism isn’t racism as though not
Knowing oft-scribed history, so whitewash it to
Satisfy their simpering sycophancy as though legislated law too
Onerous.  They use diamond blinders given to them unethically by
New and old millionaire pals divorced from reality.

 
Lavinia Kumar’s latest book is Spirited American Women: Early Writers, Artists, & Activists—very short prose of near 90 amazing women writers, poets, publishers, painters, artists, abolitionists, early suffragettes, and activists.