LEGAL CLINIC, CHURCH RECTORY, MARCH 2026

by Paula Finn

AI-Generated graphic from Craiyon

Let me not forget the volunteer interpreter,

his black bangs, a curtain raised in this dim room

as if to let in any word: hambre, matanza.

His hands, sallow, unwrinkled. He offers 

the pro bono lawyer starvation, death,

what propelled the woman seated to his left

2,000 miles on foot and crammed in vans,

a path our young interpreter already knows

not in Spanish/English, but in thirst, in ditches

become a bed, saguaros lurking overhead.

Still he comes here every Monday night.

His gift, to translate horror free of charge.

Paula Finn has been nominated for a 2026 Pushcart Prize. Her poems appeared recently in Common Ground, Bicoastal Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and Spoon River Review. On the hundredth anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, Finn spearheaded a piece of musical theater capturing that historic tragedy and the female immigrant worker organizing that arose in its wake. Featuring Finn's poetry set to music composed by the late composer Elizabeth Swados, the dramatic oratorio, Triangle: From the Fire, won the Best New Musical Theater award at the 2011 Fringe Festival in Edinburgh. 

IN THE TIME OF THE MAD KING

by Jane Rosenberg LaForge

We waited. For someone to save us—
A lawyer who emerged from an onslaught
of documents to find that smoking diamond
of indisputable scandal, the hot and hard
evidence fresh from the seismic forces
that will eventually implicate everyone
and pull the red edifice permanently
beneath the surface. We waited on 
a clutch of senators as if they were
blackbirds, screaming with thirst, as
the temperature rose and the dough 
hardened around their bellies and necks, 
their vision fit to burst. Perhaps there was
a philanthropist, a banker or some titan 
of industry who had yet to offend us, who 
could provide a sweeping indictment of
the king’s fiscal wardrobe and its hidden 
curses. We waited for anyone outfitted like
the Statue of Liberty of Kafka’s imagination, 
wielding not light toward our welcoming shore 
but a scimitar pointed toward the heavens. 
We waited for literature; for comedians, 
professionals and amateurs in puffy animal
get-ups; for a plague of insects and amphibians 
to get the job done before all other species were 
sent to their doom, along with millions of humans. 
We waited for science, geometric proofs, facts 
of all genres; for sources and methods, common
sense or history to catch up with the velocity of 
the carnage. Our children injected Botox 
to preserve their tight and inchoate faces 
because we had foreclosed on their youth 
and they were keeping their options open 
for a second childhood to be carried out free 
of the king’s aegis. We waited for creams 
and lotions, hair dye and bronzers, for their 
chemical processes to reach their malignant 
apexes. We waited for the madness to lift 
as if a curtain made of the lead
we had allowed to adulterate our paint and seep 
into our rivers; for bread and angels to nourish
the poor huddled among us, until the miracle
rebirth of women whom we had previously 
torched for failing to dispense with the king
without our assistance, as if their ashes 
and embers had always contained the directions 
but we couldn’t be bothered to read the labels. 
So we waited, and kept waiting, like mourners 
afraid to share their allegiances, until we could
blame only ourselves, instead of the victims.

Jane Rosenberg LaForge is the author of a memoir, two novels, five full-length collections of poetry, and four chapbooks of poetry. Her poem "Overheard at the Sphere in Las Vegas During Dead and Co.'s Spring Run 2025" appeared in the The New Verse News on May 23, 2025.  

PICKING UP THE SETTLEMENT CHECK FROM MY SON’S WRONGFUL-DEATH CASE DURING THE ECLIPSE

by Susan Vespoli

My dead son was in the car 

with me as I drove to the lawyer’s

office to pick up my net-settlement check

and we drove past a laughing-Buddha chihuahua 

running against traffic down the center of Dunlap

 

and we drove through a split of mountain crags 

and we drove past a guy twirling and tossing a red-arrow 

sign at an intersection and my heart and gut felt on fire 

with raw grief and I said, “Well, here we are, Adam,” 

 

meaning the end of the lawsuit 

and even as I wanted to sob and flail

I could feel him smiling beside me, 

saying, there, there, like a benevolent cloud. 

 

When the paralegal handed me the check, 

she beamed as if we should don party hats, throw confetti 

and I wanted to pop every balloon in the place, 

wave the rectangular piece of paper in the air 

and say, this represents my son’s life.

 

Outside, humans were wearing tiny plastic glasses 

and looking up at the sun and the sky 

over the parking lot glowed fluorescent 

and this check felt like me saying it was okay the cop shot my son 

 

but I have fallen into a sort of love

with a man who is ironically a lawyer 

who has helped me interpret the mind-fuck 

of the legal system, understand that money the City 

of Phoenix had to pay caused them pain to spark change

 

and it is springtime on the planet 

where my son’s physical body is only a memory 

and there is a throng of 5’ tall sunflowers 

standing outside my bedroom window 

and the ocotillo in my front yard, mere sticks and thorns 

a month ago, is now covered with soft green and topped with flame-

colored flowers the wind flutters into candles on a cake.

Susan Vespoli lives in Phoenix, AZ, where citizens are still waiting for the release of the DOJ report regarding the Phoenix Police Department's excessive use of force. Her son, Adam, was killed by a police officer on March 12, 2022.

DEAR GAG ORDER

by Susan Vespoli

The New Verse News originally published several of the poems that appear in this collection:  "Before I Knew Adam Had Died,”  "My Ex-Husband Calls… ,"   … In Reverse,” “I Am Finally Handed… ,” “Under Investigation… ,” “Dear 2022,” “Poem for My Middle Finger.”

“Do not speak of the loss or the case,” 

my lawyer’s email upon learning I sent copies

of One of Them Was Mine to President Biden,

Governor Hobbs, Senator Mark Kelly, 

Terry Gross, and a local NPR podcast host.

Dear tight strand of puka shells,

tiny beads and a flat silver OM sign,

my neck skin cinched.

Dear SHUT UP. Zipped lips.

Stage fright.    My mom’s, 

“Only say nice things.” 

Dear voice, found in my mid-forties

after a bout of cancer, the therapist

telling me later when I answered

FINE to every question, she knew

I had a lot of work to do. Dear Speak

the truth. Dear I can’t figure it out 

if I don’t write about it. Dear canceled 

poetry readings at Peregrine Bookstore

in Prescott and Changing Hands in Tempe.

Dear emotional eating, peanut M&Ms, kettle corn, 

asiago bagel, Voodoo Ranger IPA in an orange can. 

Dear “Do not speak of the loss or the case.”

Dear silenced.     Dear Adam, I am here 

to follow the thread to give you a voice. 

Susan Vespoli continues to write poems about the loss and the case, even though she wasn’t able to publicly share them for many months. She was finally able to read her book One of Them Was Mine about her son Adam's murder by a Phoenix police officer at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe on January 5, 2024, because the book's poems (and the ones from Blame It on the Serpent) were already in the hands of the cop’s lawyers who were using her poetry books as evidence against her son's value as a human being.

COUNTRY SONG FOR MY BASEBALL TEAM

by Earl J. Wilcox

Photo by Jeff Curry/USA Today via Sports Illustrated.

I know I can divorce you,

being unfaithful and untrue.

 

This late June—barely real 

summer yet—you tease me

with a rare afternoon win,

heat up the Division for a day

or so, cause me to sweat &

and swear I will never leave you.

Lately, tho, you break my heart.

I feel deceived when you bring up

players from the farm team, send

down better hitters you’ve been

flirting with. Last week, I

almost went to seek a lawyer

 

when you simply rolled over

for a bush-league, slutty team.

What happened to our spring trainin’

plans, hopes, and dreams, that you’d be

 

faithful this season, give me your

best, not waste scarce money on

 

players like that stud from out west--

You know the one I mean—look what

 

it got us. Hank Williams was right

about cheatin’ hearts, they do tell

 

on you, make us feel so lonesome

we could die. I’m getting’ in my truck,

 

pick up some brewskis no matter what

some say, there’s a lot of crying in baseball.

 

Growing up country in the American South, Earl Wilcox thrives on Cardinals baseball, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, and some Elvis.

PENCIL

by Indran Amirthanayagam

for Sara Cahill Marron

There is a time to mourn and a time
to review the cards and cast them
again on the table trusting God
to guide your hand, to say this pencil
you left with roses, chrysanthemums,
lilies, in a riot of passionate flowers
before the Supreme Court, will be
picked up by a girl after the period
of mourning, not to be conserved
in the Smithsonian's Museum
of American History, but to write
the story of a young lawyer come
to Washington to interpret laws
with grace, acuity and impartiality,
to the best of her ability, until
such time as their articulation
becomes almost unnecessary,
so ingrained they would become
in the social conscience of
Americans walking then freely. 

Indran Amirthanayagam writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Haitian Creole. He has 19 poetry books, including The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, 2020) and Sur l'île nostalgique (L'Harmattan, 2020). In music, he recorded Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, is a columnist for Haiti en Marche, won the Paterson Prize, and is a 2020 Foundation for the Contemporary Arts fellow.

THE NEW AMERICA: BRING YOUR OWN DEATH

by George Salamon

"As states have faced  challenges to carrying out executions by lethal injections, various work-arounds and alternatives have been proposed . . . Arizona may have come up with the most original concept yet: an invitation for lawyers to help kill their own clients. With drugs that can be used for lethal injections in short supply, the Arizona department of corrections' latest execution protocol states that attorneys for death row inmates are welcome to bring their own." The Guardian, February 15, 2017

No more irresolution
For those awaiting execution.
It's rugged individualism to the end
Thanks to Arizona's new godsend.
Where the condemned's lawyer
Is appointed his destroyer.
Once witness and fellow weeper,
He may play grim reaper.
We shuddered once to that final yelp,
To be marketed as an existential act
Of self-help.

George Salamon is still trying to watch the American scene sixty-nine years after his arrival from Europe.  He does it now from St. Louis, MO.

ALABAMA JUSTICE

by Wilda Morris

Anthony Ray Hinton free after nearly 30 years on Alabama Death Row —AL.com

     For Anthony Ray Hinton

“the ball of free will dropped from my hand”

~ Ishmael, in Moby Dick by Herman Melville

black male, poor
innocent, as if that matters
when the DA wants a crime solved quickly

call him a suspect
find his mother’s gun
from which the bullets were not fired
stuff him in a cell

don’t worry if his lawyer
is inadequate
don’t worry if his expert witness
is so inexpert he can hardly see
through the forensic microscope
has little experience in ballistics
is so lamentable the jury
laughs at him

ask for the death penalty
send him off to prison
to live in solitary on death row

without his family
without his friends
without his free will

fight all the way to the Supreme Court
to keep him there

until after his mother is dead
after his youth is gone
after he has almost forgotten
the feel of a loving touch
after decades of not making
significant decisions

when the court bounces
the ball of free will back to his hands
after thirty years


Wilda Morris, a past president of Illinois State Poetry Society, is workshop chair of Poets & Patrons of Chicago. She has won awards for free verse and formal poetry and haiku. She leads poetry workshops for children and for adults and has been widely published. She is retired from a career of teaching graduate student and coordinating a not-for-profit peace and justice organization. Her blog provides monthly contests for poets.