This next poem has two epigraphs.
I think it's pretty self-explanatory.
The first epigraph is from Michelle Alexander's book
The New Jim Crow, which I highly recommend.
And she writes, "Almost no one ever goes to trial.
Nearly all criminal cases, 97% are resolved
through plea bargaining."
And that was stunning to me.
As a former lawyer, I wasn't a criminal lawyer,
but still, I was just shocked to think
how much of our idea about criminals is based on the idea
that they've been proven guilty--
mostly not.
And the second epigraph is from TS Eliot.
So poets out there, if you know your Prufrock.
[LAUGHTER]
Let us go and make our visit.
This poem is called "Jury Duty."
No one wants to be there.
Many of us glitter like the sea in sunshine,
shedding sweat or tears at the mere thought
of a criminal court.
Such proximity to police, to cuffs, and charges.
To be trapped playing a role in some tragedy, condemner,
uncomfortably close to the condemned.
Many others think instantly of opportunity costs.
Time is money.
Who can afford to spend three to five days
worth listening to the lawyers coming and going
through the oceans of files, talking
of boys who were no angels.
No.
To serve is a right and our duty.
Each to each.
But the potential juror peers into the courtroom
as if it were quarantined for the plague.
Once years ago, my father served in a trial.
A stormy evening, the darkness intensified
by winds that made our metal screen door
buzz like a warped harmonica.
As we waited dinner for him, the power failed.
My sister and I, young and younger,
shrieked until our mom lit the fat candle,
its plastic container painted to look like stained glass.
As we sat distracted by flickering scenes of Jesus's
miracles, the phone rang.
Our father's one call to tell our mother
the jury would be sequestered overnight in courthouse cells.
Daddy's in jail--
[LAUGHTER]
--was all we girls took in.
Our lives had been a steady caravan
of cautions and counsels, inevitably ending,
and stay out of prison.
We hardly dared imagine that anyone once caught behind bars
emerged again.
The next day brought morning sun and Father in the afternoon.
We greeted him as if he'd come from the dead.
Would it be a hardship to serve three weeks, dutiful jurors
in my state are asked.
The line to plead excuses runs long.
Meanwhile, money or lack thereof is
time for all the men and women awaiting trials
in cells they can't bail themselves out of.
They hear the prosecutors spooning out their lives,
inviting the accused, sing to me.
They sing-- a chorus loud of bodies White, and Brown,
and Black, flooding prisons in waves
while we malinger on the beach in our own sequestered
chambers.
Their human voices wake us, or we drown.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
I think I will read just two more.
I don't want to go over time accidentally.
And I'm not keeping track very well.