The Shine Journal

Civic Duty

 

by

 

Paul Handley

Art by:Stephen Stacey

 

 

 

 

Here comes the jury,

Worried that education would be my chop.

Hands in my pocket, gentle smile, soft and hesitant voice.

I’m in.  Made the cut.  No work for at least two days.

 

None of us a peer.

Eleven against one with hostility.

My faults include:  never been in that position, use of term crackhead,

accepting inexplicit admission as confession,

What is my fault, is the anal regard of jury direction,

without which the rest are right and justice prevails in their case,

the justice system in mine.

 

After lunch the world intrudes (daughter’s shots).

I take a cue and justify.

Petty ass crime anyway,

trumped up on racial grounds,

I gracelessly concede.

 

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My Bio: Paul Handley spent a career as a student and a student of odd jobs. He has a paralegal certificate, attended law school for a year, has an MA, MPA, and is abd. He has driven a cab, scraped fish guts, sold meat door-to-door, Director of a truck driving school and multiple others. Paul has had work published or forthcoming in Bards and Sages, Breadcrumb Scabs, Burst!, The Driftwood Review, Gold Dust, Hobble Creek Review, iddie, Macabre Cadaver, the Maynard, The Northville Review, Ophelia Street, Poe Little Thing, Potomac: Poetry & Politics, Red Fez, Short Story Library, Shape of a Box, The Smoking Poet, Winning Writers, World Of Myth, Yellow Mama and Yippee.

My Motivation : Civic Duty is about my recent frustrating jury experience.