The 14A District Court stands near the corner
of Washtenaw and Carpenter, presiding over
the busiest intersection in the whole city, which means
when you’re being taken into custody, you can count
on having a little extra time to wait. I cried at that light.
My father told me to find a dunce cap for having the gall
to pick a fight with a police officer, but he forgot
a cone is just an infinite number of circles diminishing
into nothingness, or: what goes around comes around.
No, as far as I know, nothing bad ever happened to
that guy, but someday I’ll feel a tug at the corner of
my lips from a force I cannot explain, and it will mean
he’s forgotten every excuse he ever invented to think
of himself as being on the right side of things and
will die in a quiet agony surrounded by friends and
family who cannot know what haunts him. Shh,
I still believe in the patient magic of comeuppance.
I like to introduce my History of Criminality by saying
I antagonized a police officer and paid for it because
people have knotty feelings about retail fraud, but
everyone likes a good story about cops being bad; we stared
at each other before the taser went off and I saw no apology
in the pales of his eyes, growing small and squinting against
my pleas. I never feared for my life and realizing that relief
brought me to tears. Still does, sometimes. I’m trying to quit
smoking this month, but without a record or a bad habit
I’m afraid of feeling soft. Expungement Fairs are becoming
popular throughout the country, where benevolent law students
who’ve yet to choose wealth over humanity turn your worst
days into paperwork and smile like they expect a thank you.
They had free snacks in the waiting room. Washtenaw County
is 12.7% Black and I didn’t see a white person until I was
called up. I had three cigarettes while waiting and got to talk
with some of the other criminals; we made plans for all the jobs
we might have if they Etch-A-Sketched our pasts. No one
in line really believes it will work. I used to believe myself
to be a little Robin Hood, stealing groceries every week, but
a Marxist professor once told me that theft is morally more
complicated than I think it is, and who’s to argue with authority.
Isaac Pickell is a Black and Jewish poet, PhD candidate, and adjunct instructor in Detroit, and a graduate of Miami University’s MFA program in creative writing. He is the author of everything saved will be last (Black Lawrence, 2021) and It’s not over once you figure it out (Black Ocean, 2023).
See more poems from Issue 21.1 by purchasing a copy in our online store. Digital copies only $5.
