ジェイミー

You Can Call Me Faithless

Instead I prayed, oh Lord, let me be something useful and unpretentious.
— Mary Oliver, “More Beautiful than the Honey Locust Tree Are the Words of the Lord”

It would appear that someone has been trolling my FaceBook page in search of ammunition for my opponent to use against me. In particular, someone is using a picture that I posted from an atheist website in support of marriage equality to paint me as some kind of immoral person. For this reason, I want to take a moment to set the record straight about my religious affiliation.

I identify as a humanist. If you are unfamiliar with the term, a humanist is a non-religious person who looks to science, reason, empathy, and compassion in order to live an ethical and meaningful life. Humanists look to the here and now for meaning. We place the responsibility for ethical behavior upon ourselves. Kurt Vonnegut, Walt Whitman, and Thom Yorke could all be considered humanists.

I was raised Catholic. In fact, I attended Holy Cross Academy in Miami for a time. I would add a link to the school’s website, except that it was shut down after a monk-in-training killed a nun. The monk claimed to have been sexually abused by two priests (my former teachers) prior to the murder. I learned at an early age that religious affiliation was no guarantee of morality.

Most of my family are still practicing Christians. My mother attends a Southern Baptist church and my father is a Presbyterian. Some of my relatives are evangelical Christians and many are Roman Catholic. While we do not always agree about theology, we still love one another.

My wife was raised as a protestant Christian and has been a member of both Methodist and Presbyterian churches. The fact that Beverly has different religious views from me has never been a problem in our relationship. While we lived in Chicago, for example, she was on the staff at a large Presbyterian church for six years. I never joined the church, but I did ring in the handbell choir and I had many sublime moments listening to the music of Messiaen and Bach played on the church’s pipe organ. I even accompanied Beverly on a mission trip to Cuba. While I do not share her faith, I have deep respect for her. We share a common belief in the inherent dignity and worth of all people, regardless of belief.

After we became parents, Beverly and I sought out a faith community that would welcome both of our religious viewpoints. We joined Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois in 2011 and became members of the Unitarian Universalists of the Big Bend after we moved to Alpine.

One of the wonderful things about America is our freedom of religion. We do not have to share the same faith to get along.

A Calm and Reasonableness Like the World Has Never Seen

December 2, 1942, is not a date that has lived in infamy, and yet it is one of the most important dates in human history. That is the date upon which mankind probably sowed the seeds of its own destruction.

On that Wednesday afternoon, under the racquetball courts at the University of Chicago, Enrico Fermi and his group of scientists popped open a bottle of chianti. Moments before, “Chicago Pile-1,” the world’s first nuclear reactor, had gone “critical” and become self-sustaining. Mankind had unlocked the power of the atom.

The output of CP-1 was minimal – barely enough to energize the filament of a light bulb. And yet, so diligent were those who sought to amplify that power that less than three years later an atomic bomb was dropped on Japan that detonated with the same amount of force as 15,000 tons of TNT, killing 80,000 people. Many thousands more subsequently died from burns and radiation poisoning. Three days later (today is the 72nd anniversary, in fact), a second bomb was dropped.

Instead of looking at the wasteland that these bombs created and viewing them as something that should never have been done, people went in the opposite direction, building thousands more of these bombs, some of which are hundreds of times more powerful than the ones that were dropped on Japan. And here we are today, all of us living under the threat of nuclear annihilation. It is a heavy burden. Oppenheimer and Stimson thought little of tomorrow’s children when they sought to become death. I cannot be the only parent in America who darkly wonders as he drives his daughters to school whether this is the day when they might be vaporized. [As it turns out, I’m not.]

Now, we have a situation. Despite numerous attempts to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear aspirations, it seems that the North Koreans may have finally developed a bomb that is capable of reaching the United States. The president has threatened nuclear war. The very concept is madness, and yet we inch closer to it. Already, I sense the leadership in Washington priming the public to accept the argument that they had no other choice.

I reject that. Here is another choice: talk to them.

Begin those talks by acknowledging the reason that diplomacy has failed. Admit that a policy of “we reserve the right to destroy you at any time while also rejecting your claim to defend yourself by similar means,” is merely hypocrisy masquerading as diplomacy; “trust us not to destroy you,” is not something that any hostile sovereign power can reasonably be expected to accept.

How about taking the hypocrisy out of things and simply saying, “we don’t think you should have nuclear weapons and, guess what, neither should we? No one should. So here’s the deal: abandon your nuclear program and we will abandon ours. Truly. Not only will we cease construction of any further weapons, but we will also begin the immediate dismantling of all of our current weapons. It’s going to take us some time, because we have so very many of them, but in ten years the people of North Korea will no longer have to live in fear of nuclear attack from the United States.”

This is radical, I know. “We can’t do that,” you’re thinking. “The Chinese and the Russians will never follow our lead. We’ll be vulnerable.”

It’s okay, just breathe. First, I actually think that if we began a complete and unilateral draw-down of our arsenal, the Chinese and Russians might follow our lead because they could no longer justify the risk and expense of maintaining their own arsenals. But even if they don’t, it doesn’t matter because of the simple truth that for some things there is no sufficient justification. The mass incineration of children is one of those things.

I want you to engage in a little thought experiment with me. It’s going to be a touch uncomfortable, but I think it’s necessary in these times.

Imagine that you’re in a room by yourself and you’ve just received word that the enemy has launched their nuclear weapons. Our defenses have failed. In ten minutes all of America will be lost.

But, on a control panel in front of you, there is a large red button. Pressing the button will launch our devastating and unstoppable retaliatory attack. There is nothing left on earth for you to do now except to push it, or not push it.

Do you push it?

In your mind, push it, and ask yourself what you have done, really. Have you saved your country? Have you done something that the withered remnants of humanity will thank you for? Have you done what Jesus would have done?

The development of the atom bomb was folly; mankind is too impulsive, unpredictable, and accident-prone to control such power — that we haven’t killed ourselves with it yet is nothing less than a miracle. But now we have an opportunity. We can use this opportunity to further prove our unworthiness to possess deep knowledge, or we can use it to save face while walking back an advance that should never have been made.

The people of my generation had no choice but to be born under a nuclear threat. What better gift to give to the next generation than to sweep that threat aside?

Ought we not to at least try?

Our Enduring Fraternity

The Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown by John Trumbull (1820)

President Trump recently visited France and complimented the French First Lady on her looks. Instead, he might have said:

President Macron,

Thank you so much for your invitation. It is, of course, a great honor for me to be here in the capital of America’s oldest ally.

You know, it occurred to me as I was flying over here that the friendship that exists between the United States and France really is remarkable. We have never stood across the battle lines from one another. Instead, we have always stood together, shoulder to shoulder. When we needed you eleven score and sixteen years ago, you were there. Almost a century and a half later, when the occasion arose for us to repay the debt that we owed the nation of Lafayette, we did so. And we united again less than thirty years after that to restore France to its rightful place of prominence in the world as we and our allies swept the agents of tyranny and fascism from the European continent, we hope, for ever.

It must be said, though, that even though we’ve never raised arms against one another, we haven’t always gotten perfectly along. We have from time to time quarreled, which is the mark, I believe, of a true friendship. After all, friends only try to persuade those they truly care about.

When we invaded Iraq, for example, France didn’t like it, and told us so. We, in return, acted childishly. Instead of appreciating the criticism for what it was: the concern of a loyal ally who has supported us throughout our history, we scoffed at France and sat insulted in a lonely corner eating our freedom fries. I want to apologize for that.

I feel that I can apologize because I am not someone who believes that the actions of our forebears are immune from criticism simply because they may no longer be here to defend themselves. On the contrary, when one assumes the mantle of public office one also assumes the burden of being judged for one’s official conduct even after one leaves public office, for it is true that the evil that men do lives after them. If we act in ways that will affect posterity, we must also expect posterity to judge us for how we acted.

As such, I do believe that I have the authority to apologize for the juvenile and uncharitable way that the people of the United States behaved toward the people of France not so long ago and, in this instance, I further believe that it is my duty to do so. I am grateful to the people of France for being more magnanimous and mature than the people of my country can sometimes be, as is evidenced by the grace that you have shown my fellow Americans by inviting me to be their representative at these events here today. Thank you.

That being said, I want to put our disagreements behind us and focus on the remarkable things that our two great nations have done for one other these last two hundred and fifty-odd years. You saved our revolution, which then went on to inspire yours. It was a Frenchman who was among the first to come to America and observe our democracy, and who then wrote a luminous book explaining it to us better than we understood it ourselves. When tired immigrants came to our shores hopeful that the blessings of liberty and equality for which every human being yearns would finally be allowed to them, it was a gift from the French that welcomed them and that consecrated the promise of my nation that the United States would indeed be a land in which they could grow the gardens of their dreams.

But that statue continues to consecrate something else as well. It consecrates the spirit of fraternity that has always existed between the French and the American people. It is physical proof of what every American has always known: that if we can count on anything, we can count on France. It is my sincere hope that the people of France know and believe the same of us. It has always been so. May it always be so.

Vive la alliance et vive la France!

Luna

Luna is twenty-eight and under federal indictment for the second time. The first time had been on account of her boyfriend, who asked her to help him sell some drugs. She made a few phone calls, never suspecting that the buyer on the other end was an informant working off his own case for the FBI. She did time in Carswell before she was “returned” to Mexico.

She is a Mexican legally, but not really. Her parents had brought her to Texas when she was young, and she’d grown up here, graduated from High School here, had kids here. But she isn’t a citizen and she’d been caught dealing drugs and that’s that.

In Mexico, she tried to make a go of it by living with family that she’d never met before. At least she spoke the language. She called her kids, who remained in Texas, daily. Every so often, they Skyped. After a while, though, she decided that she wanted to hold them again so she violated the terms of her release and tried to come back. She was caught at the checkpoint. Now, she’s in the Winkler County Jail.

“Luna!” Liz says as she walks in, “what have you done? I’m so sorry for you!”

Luna explains that there were no drugs this time, just an attempt to come back to see her girls. “But the guidelines. Don’t you remember the federal sentencing guidelines?”

Liz lays a chart on the table.

“Your base offense level is here,” she says, pointing with a pen. “But you were deported for a drug crime, which means you’re catching all these extra levels. Plus, that prior case gives you criminal history points. Plus, you were on supervised release when you tried to come back: more points! It’s bad!”

“How bad?”

Liz puts down the pen. “Even at the bottom of the range, you’re looking at about five years.”

Silence.

“I mean, you can try it if you want to, but you’re not gonna win it. You were caught at the checkpoint. You have a prior drug conviction. You can’t dispute any of that.”

“But five years …”

“The system punishes people for going to trial. The judge can make it worse than five if you lose. And he will. Trust me.”

“But what about my kids? I need to raise them.”

“How old are they?”

“Seven and nine.”

Liz folds her hands and places them on the table. “I’m sorry, honey, but you’re going to have to find somebody else to raise your kids.”

Cross-Posted from Human Rights in America.

Entering the Calculation

Slate has run an interview with law professor John Pfaff, who suggests that, contrary to popular belief, America’s mass incarceration problem is not a result of the war on drugs or longer prison sentences. Instead, he posits that it’s the result of prosecutors charging more felonies than they used to. [According to Pfaff, between the years 1994 to 2008, the probability that a district attorney would file a felony charge increased from 1 in 3, to 2 in 3.] Pfaff doesn’t know the reason for the increase, nor does he know how to combat it. This brings up some interesting questions.

First, why are prosecutors charging more cases these days? Well, why not? With a national plea rate in excess of 90%, it’s painless. It makes good political sense to indict 2 in 3 cases if you know that they’re both likely to plead. That way you can be “tough on crime” and lazy at the same time.

Second, how do we discourage prosecutors from bringing too many charges? It seems to me that taking more cases to trial would help. If prosecutors expect the cases that they indict to be tried instead of pled, they’re much less likely to pursue weak cases or cases with unserious charges. This will have the laudatory effect of both minimizing the risk of innocent people going to prison, as well as making sure that our prisons only hold people who really need to be there.

Of course, legislatures can help with this by jettisoning the draconian drug sentences that exist in this country, and replacing them with sentences that are reasonable. After all, it’s longer sentences that compel defendants, even in cases where the evidence against them is weak, to plead guilty. If, however, the sentences were such that going to trial were more frequently worth the risk, more trials would happen, forcing prosecutors to prioritize. That would get the charging rate back down to 1 in 3 pretty quickly, I bet. And maybe it won’t even be that much longer before the United States no longer has the largest prison population in the world.

The Prison Problem (David Brooks, 29 Sept. 2015)

An Antidote To Unjust Laws

Jury nullification occurs when a jury decides to ignore the law. Why would anyone ever want a jury to do that? Well, there are a lot of unjust laws out there. What is an unjust law? According to Martin Luther King Jr. [pdf], “an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”

Even though Justice Scalia probably sighs loudly whenever someone utters the phrase “natural law,” I’m going to talk about it anyway. The fact is that some pretty bright and historically significant people have relied upon natural law. Martin Luther King was one of them. Thomas Jefferson was another.

What I would expect any judge to be even more uncomfortable with than allowing natural law arguments in courtrooms, is continuing the practice of not allowing them, as that seems to infringe upon one of the central principles of a defendant’s right to due process: the right to be heard.

The most sacred of interests, a person’s liberty and reputation, are at stake in criminal trials. As such, we must be certain that all possible arguments in favor of the preservation of each are allowed. If we do not empower jurors to at least consider the merits of a law which, at least in theory, they have already approved, then we engage in an exercise that is little more than a show trial. This may go a long way toward satisfying our desire for expeditious process, but it must go a very little way toward satisfying our demand for justice. It is not enough to merely apply the law. We must also inquire into the law’s morality. Dred Scott, let us never forget, was once the law.

When we consider that the United States “has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, [yet] has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners,” how can we deny that many of our criminal laws remain deserving of whatever scrutiny is available? Such a prison population represents a failure of democratic government and the jury trial, which is perhaps one of the purest forms of democracy devised, is a way to fix it. By preventing arguments on nullification, however, the courts do not allow for meaningful trials. Instead, they are content to send millions to prison who may be factually guilty, but morally innocent. That is shameful.

[For a more scholarly and academically supported argument on this issue, please see this pdf.]

Jury Convicts Ex-Pastor Who Shared Jury Nullification Fliers

Don’t Bind Me to “Whizzer” White

Judges should abandon the doctrine of stare decisis and welcome the citation of non-legal texts in attorney briefs. The power of an argument derives from the quality of its reasoning and, to a degree, its poetics. There should be no power in its “position,” such as the fact that it originated in a court. The benefit of being on a court should consist solely in the fact that judges enjoy prominence in our society and, as such, their words garner more attention than those of other citizens. Judges’ words should be given no additional power simply because of the judge’s title.

The Ancient Greeks understood this. Cleon was more prominent than Diodotus, but his argument, being barbarous, failed. On the other hand, Pericles was adored, not because he was an important figure in society, but because he was a clear and eloquent thinker.

I recognize that becoming a judge is difficult. It suggests a level of persistence, intelligence, integrity, and wisdom that is uncommon in most people. It suggests this; it doesn’t guarantee it. William Rehnquist was Chief Justice of the United States. He was also a drug-addicted hypocrite whose judicial philosophy was to decide cases according to his personal prejudices. His First Amendment jurisprudence made that plain. I say good riddance to William Rehnquist. Stare decisis, however, says Rehnquist lives.

Of course, if a judge’s opinions are worthy of guiding us beyond their authors’ corporal lives, that’s fine. There have been great minds in the American judiciary (Brandeis and Holmes come immediately to mind) whose opinions are deserving of special and continued consideration. But such minds are rare. We should not pretend that every judge is of such caliber. Yet that is how stare decisis works; James Madison’s and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s comments are merely “persuasive,” while Warren Burger’s and Sandra Day O’Connor’s are “binding.” This is ludicrous. [Ironically, Justice Thomas might agree with me.] Instead of following people just because they happen to be a judge, let’s treat nothing as binding and everything as persuasive. The question then becomes what is most persuasive.

But what about predictability? Won’t unmooring the courts from precedent result in chaos? No. Abandoning stare decisis will not untether courts from the pursuit of reason and truth. These things are timeless. They will forever form the basis for all quality opinions, legal or not. By abandoning stare decisis judicial legitimacy and consistency will come not from adhering to a rule simply because, good or not, some prior court said it was the rule. Rather, it will derive from the repeated application of the best rules simply because they have proven to be the best rules.

This is, in fact, what happens anyway. Courts part with precedent when it’s obvious that they must (Dred Scott no longer controls, thank god), but this process takes too long. It results in bad opinions having an unacceptable level of control over our society. It also discourages diligent attorneys from mining mankind’s vast, non-caselaw-related, intellectual riches for gems.

So, let’s abandon stare decisis. Let our jurisprudence be guided by bright lights of thought wherever they may be found. Let the grip of mediocre opinions written by lesser jurists retire when their authors do.

Afghanistan

[So it goes.]

[I wrote the op-ed below in January of 2011. I shopped it around to several news organizations, but it didn’t meet with any interest. Reading this article, however, it still seems relevant. Noor Jahan Akbar, who is quoted in the piece, is correct: “A mind-set built over 100 years takes longer than 10 years to change.”]

As Americans assess our progress in the war in Afghanistan, we are right to question whether this war can actually be won. After ten years of struggle, Taliban fighters still operate unchecked in large parts of the country, and the Afghan government remains corrupt and weak. Indeed, even the White House has characterized the gains that have been made as “fragile and reversible.”

However, I think it is proper to view the war as entering a new and unavoidable phase in which gains can not solely be expected to be generated by the military. Our armed forces have already succeeded in clearing the Taliban from Afghanistan ’s major cities, as well as in making those population centers secure. Now, if the work of nation building is to continue, a large-scale civilian effort is needed to establish educational institutions in the areas that have been secured, and to encourage intellectual exchange between the people of our two nations.

With regard to the importance of establishing educational institutions, it is important to recognize that this is a war of ideas. Consequently, education is a critical means to success in Afghanistan. To understand why, consider that the number of enemies that we could potentially face in Afghanistan is limitless because what makes a person a Taliban is not who they are, but what they believe. The only way to defeat them, therefore, is to destroy their argument, and the only way to do that, is to articulate a better one.

For this purpose, a military presence alone is not enough. To address the non-military problems of misinformation and misunderstanding that abound in Afghanistan , non-military personnel are required. For example, as was recently suggested by Professor Dominic Tierney in the Los Angeles Times, Afghanistan needs administrators to establish cultural and educational institutions. It also needs teachers to confront its astonishingly low literacy rate, which Professor Tierney places at thirty percent – less than the literacy rate of America in 1650.

In addition to establishing an educational system, a relationship must be fostered between the people of the United States and Afghanistan, since a large part of the animosity that exists between us is premised on a false concept of who we actually are. It is unrealistic to expect this to be accomplished through the medium of a camouflaged Marine riding in an MRAP, shouldering an M16. Appreciation and respect for one another can only be achieved through direct civilian contact.

There are many ways in which this contact might occur. Instituting an exchange program whereby people from each nation can learn about one another might be one useful program. There are others, but the specifics of these do not really matter. What does matter is that the people of our two countries be allowed to engage with each other. This will, of course, be expensive, risky, and difficult, but it is also necessary if we are serious about establishing true democracy in Afghanistan .

Finally, there will be those who say that Afghanistan is already lost. The wiser course, they may argue, is to cut our losses and leave. My response is that, although we have spent years prosecuting this war, to what extent have we acted with the understanding that this never was a conventional war of battlefields and front lines, but an unconventional one of ideas? In other words, how much effort have we spent in enlightening, rather than merely securing, Afghanistan ?

“Ignorance is of a peculiar nature,” wrote Thomas Paine. Once dispelled, “it is impossible to re-establish it,” for ignorance is “the absence of knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant.”

The Taliban seek to keep the people of Afghanistan ignorant of who we really are and what we really stand for. If we commit to the education of the Afghan people – for example, by making a concerted effort to increase the literacy rate – reason can prevail over ignorance. Furthermore, if we show that we are invested in them by helping them build the institutional foundations that are necessary for their prosperity, we may come to respect, rather than fear, one another. In these accomplishments lie the seeds of victory.

One Little Victory

ast month marked my ninth year as a public defender. In that time, I’ve fought a lot and lost a lot (one of my clients is serving forty years for murder, another is serving life), and it often seems that all I’ve accomplished is … nothing, other than the right to say, “but I tried, goddamnit. At least I did that.” Every once in a while though, I almost remember why I took the one less traveled by.

This morning, I stepped into a courtroom and saw an inmate waiting in the jury box. The public defender for that room was busy at the bench, so I pulled the inmate’s file and saw that he was in custody for missing a court date on a charge of driving on a suspended license.

I talked to the inmate and heard a familiar story: he couldn’t post the $500 bond, he missed his court date because he couldn’t get a ride, his mother was sick, etc. Since his license was suspended for a DUI, I told him that he was facing a mandatory minimum of ten days in jail if the judge convicted him. He started crying. I told him that the judge could choose to give him supervision instead of a conviction, in which case he would be released today, but that there were no guarantees – the judge could convict him and give him more than ten days. (Of course, I also told him about his trial rights.) He chose to roll the dice.

After that, I did what I’ve done hundreds of times: I argued for my client’s freedom. I explained to the judge why he missed court. I told her of his family situation. I minimized his criminal history. I hoped for the best. He got supervision and a jail release, and I was relieved. And then I left the courtroom and forgot about the whole thing.

Hours later, as I was waiting for the afternoon train home, a man approached me. Dressed in regular clothes instead of the jail’s orange jumpsuit, I didn’t recognize him. “You’re the PD who helped me out this morning” he said. “Thanks.”

[Drop Cap by Jessica Hische.]

A Nuclear Family

I’m glad that Iran has agreed to return to nuclear talks, but it’s not going to work. We will never be able to successfully negotiate with Iran, or any other aspiring nuclear power because, on the issue of nuclear weapons, we are hypocrites. Non-nuclear countries will always think: you have nuclear weapons, why shouldn’t we? They are right. To take the position that the United States is somehow more deserving of a nuclear arsenal than another nation is to claim a superiority that is as condescending as it is false. The fact is: nuclear weapons are too dangerous for any nation to have; no nation is deserving of the “privilege” to destroy the world. If we truly want to avoid a nuclear holocaust, we must lead by example and destroy our own nuclear weapons. All of them.

What I propose is that every existing nuclear power invest in one nuclear weapons repository in a neutral location (perhaps Antarctica?) where all of the planet’s nuclear weapons will be housed. By “all of the planet’s nuclear weapons” I do not mean every weapon currently in existence; there are far too many weapons already, and 98% of them should be destroyed. Rather, I mean that there would be no weapons on earth, other than what would be contained in this repository.

The member states that would oversee this repository would include any nation that currently has nuclear weapons capability. The rules for firing a weapon from this repository would be these: 1) no weapon can be fired without majority agreement by the member states and, 2) under no circumstances can a weapon be fired at any terrestrial address. The sole purpose of this repository would be to address common, extraterrestrial threats, such as the impending impact of an asteroid. No weapon in this facility would ever be allowed to be used against humanity.

Concomitant with the agreement of all existing nuclear nations to invest in this shared repository, there must also be an agreement to prevent any additional nations from developing nuclear weapons. If any nation, including any member nation, is found to be developing a nuclear weapon of its own, the other nations must agree to act, militarily if necessary, against that nation.

An uneasy peace purchased at the threat of mutual annihilation is no legacy to pass on to our children. Like the boy in Akira Kurosawa’s short film from Dreams called Sunshine Through the Rain, we have learned too late that the very pursuit of this knowledge has possibly doomed us, but the line has been crossed and now “[w]e must somehow find a silken cord to control this beast” [pdf].

If all other nations agree to the complete destruction of their personal stockpile of nuclear weapons, so should the United States. By this agreement, the nuclear burden will finally rest where it belongs: as the shared responsibility of all humankind.

Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Party Leader, Says He’d Never Use Nuclear Weapons (New York Times, Sept. 30, 2015)

Donald Trump, Perhaps Unwittingly, Exposes Paradox of Nuclear Arms (New York Times, Aug. 3, 2016)

The Buffalo Wrangler

I got my first job at fourteen,
bagging groceries at the Winn-Dixie
on the corner of Sunset and 87th.
It wasn’t poetry,
though there was one old woman in a rusted blue car
with brown water sloshing around the trunk
who always gave me $3 when I carried out her groceries.
That was more than the chap in the Mercedes gave,
and I never forgot it.

Then, in ‘91 we moved to Clearwater, and I transferred
to the store at the corner of McMullen Booth and Enterprise.
I had a crush on the cashier who was a junior and pretty beyond my hopes,
but that didn’t stop me
from buying her ice cream all summer.

One day, there was loud music and a black sports car
driving too fast for the parking lot.
The thing miraculously jerked to a stop
just before hitting the car parked in front of it.
On the bumper was a sticker that said heaven doesn’t want me
and hell’s afraid I’ll take over,
and a man in black got out,
looked at me collecting shopping carts and said
gathering the silver buffalo, eh?
And then he walked away.
And then I saw myself beneath that sun
in my red vest, white shirt, and black tie,
and it all seemed absurd.

I was sixteen looking for sex and poetry
and instead finding Butterball turkeys

to be packed apart from the Drano
(I was, after all, a professional)
and be careful with those eggs, young man(!)
and boy, life doesn’t really care at all,
and it’ll totally suck for you, if you let it.

And I went back inside to the cold, stale air and fluorescent lights
and the manager said someone had dropped a jar of Ragu,
and I looked at this man, old as my father,
in his blue manager’s vest and I said I’ll keep this job
for as long as I need the money to pay for guitar lessons, but,
if I ever need this job for food,
I quit, I quit, I quit.

Blog