AFTERMATH — A FOUND SONNET

by Susan Vespoli

—all words in the poem from a KJZZ Interview with Tom Maxedon

Susan Vespoli and her book One of Them Was Mine

What happened? Officer Lindo shot my son

in the back of his head. Blew everything

apart. In the face of powerlessness,

we should say his name: Adam Vespoli.

 

Phoenix Police Department Disciplin-

ary Review Board: cop was found out 

of policy. Immediately resigned. Freedom 

of Information Act. Aftermath. Coping

 

with grief. A molten slosh of pain. Healing

thoughts and hearts. My son, a big believer. 

My mission, words in mouth, to be his voice. 

Lawsuit resolved. Financial settlement. 

 

The    policeman    is    no     longer 

a policeman. He’s driving a truck in Texas.

Susan Vespoli writes from Phoenix, AZ and believes in the power of poetry to create change.

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.

MISS CISSY TEACHES A MATH LESSON

by Sandra Anfang

George Floyd as a boy with his mother Larcenia, known as Miss Cissy, who died on May 30, 2018

.

My son George is dead. We lie 

under the earth in a quiet Houston

cemetery where we grieve together. 

All of Minneapolis is grieving.

Twenty-seven months from now

we will still be grieving.

I heard him call out for me

as he struggled for eight minutes

under the knee of the white cop

My name is tattooed on his belly.

We are connected at the core.

In twenty-seven years we will still be grieving.

I used to love the number twenty-seven:

three times three times three.

The number of black men police kill

each year has not changed since I died.

Twelve hundred sixty-five of my babies have

been felled, and they are all my babies.

Here they said. Take this money in exchange

for George’s life, but that won’t bring him back.

I cannot balance this equation. 

Three point three: the number

of millions our family was paid

for every minute that white cop 

pressed his hate into George’s neck.

Just forty-six, he was a dad and grandad.

The city has wiped the crime scene clean

but our pain is an indelible stain.

Money is a powerful mop. We will use it

to help the cause of black folks everywhere.

That white cop must be locked away

if that’s what it takes to end 

this circle of slaughter.

Sandra Anfang is an award-winning poet, poetry teacher, and editor. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals including San Francisco Peace and Hope, Spillway, The New Verse News, and Rattle. Her two chapbooks Looking Glass Heart and Road Worrier were published by Finishing Line Press in 2016 and 2018, respectively. Xylem Highway, a full-length collection, was published by Main Street Rag in 2019. Sandra teaches with California Poets in the Schools and hosts Rivertown Poets, a monthly reading series, in Petaluma, California. This poem was born of the twenty-seven-million-dollar settlement for George’s life by the city of Minneapolis this week.

CORPORATE HEAVENARCHY

by Sonya Groves

Citigroup and the Justice Department have agreed to a $7 billion deal that will settle a federal investigation into the mortgage securities the bank sold in the run-up to the financial crisis. “The bank’s misconduct was egregious,’’ Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a statement. “As a result of their assurances that toxic financial products were sound, Citigroup was able to expand its market share and increase profits.” --NY Times, July 14, 2014

  “His main man Satan planting the learning trees of consciousness” --Miguel Piñero

And the Devil attended the dance

of the button downs, he was surprised

by their invitation.

God normally attended

their balls.

But God had grown bored.

Extortion,

greed,

fraud,

poverty

had played out their songs,

so God gave way to Satan.

Typical of management, Satan thought

to pass the shit to a farmer of human

sorrow and expect more profit 

with the same staff.

He wanted a raise
and a promotion.


Sonya Groves is a teacher of English and History in San Antonio. She has published a short story in the Abydos Education Journal, has poetry publications in La Noria, The Voices Project, Aries, and Cliterature.  She has been a conference presenter at the East Carolina University Multi-Cultural Literature Review Conference.  Currently she is pursuing her Master’s degree in English at Our Lady of the Lake University.