Review of One of Them Was Mine

One of Them Was Mine
Poetry by Susan Vespoli
Kelsay Books, 2023
$20.00, 92 pages
ISBN: 978-1-63980-361-3

Before reading a line from this book it is important to know that Susan Vespoli’s son, Adam, was shot and killed by a Phoenix policeman on March 12th, 2022. Adam lived from 1983 to 2022 and was struggling with life on the street and attempting to turn his fortunes around when an officer’s actions turned desperation into a capital offence. Adam was not armed. Such incidents occur in Phoenix at a frequency that begs the question of how officers are trained to react to the unusual. After absorbing the news, Susan Vespoli made writing this book her priority and its appearance is a raw statement about her son’s end and a more intimate account of how she has been privately coming to terms with the shock.

It feels impolite to approach these poems with thoughts of line breaks and poetic verve as focal points, but it would be selling the venture short to categorize it as anything other than a well-written set of poems that vary in their shape and style. The first section is preceded by a text message from Adam in 2021: “I want to share it with the world someday and I believe that is part of my purpose.” The opening poem reflects on seeing a hummingbird as

I didn’t know

my son had already disappeared from this human life

or that I’d google to find a hummer is a symbol for freedom

(Before I knew Adam had died,)

The Found Sonnets are made of words from Adam’s text messages which highlight in fragments the details of life with no fixed address.

. . . Book bag.

Pulling suitcase with clothes and food. I have

everything I need. Cold first few nights.

(Found Sonnet 2. Broke Up)

The work it takes to get all the necessary information from the police authorities leads to yet another thread in the book, a Southwestern Kafka-style quest. There is a video that led to this poem with the lines:

. . . and I ingest that cop’s face,

his piss caught on bus cam, his dark-ice eyes,

close-cropped black beard, slack lips; then

the slim shape of my son, the cop’s gun

(Watching 17 Seconds of Video)

Back on the softer side of a mother’s own moving forward from the loss, she often weaves bird or animal sightings into her experience. Remembering that Adam had pet cats of his own in the past, when Susan Vespoli finds a “a flash of fur napping in shadows” in her yard she eases into the intersecting of memory and grief when she sees the cat sleeping before she opens the sliding glass patio door and

he leaped up to the top of the block wall

then dropped to the other side.

(About a Month After Adam Died, a Cat)

There are so many layers here, from personal to public, paying tribute to a person’s struggle to get his life back in order, and the inevitable anger at the unnecessary loss. The skill in the poems lies in framing the poet’s honesty, touching an emotional nerve without ever sounding exploitive of a reader. In her other work, Susan Vespoli often brings out her edge of humor, while here her imagination brings her to think of Adam waiting to reappear:

to tell me he is living

free of pills and booze and meth

and smack and at the end

of each long hot Phoenix day,

he drops himself

into the cool blue complex pool,

then emerges shiny, dripping.

(My Son No Longer Missing)

The most appropriate ending to this review is to quote from the short letter the poet included in sending copies of the book to Arizona’s Governor and other high-placed individuals who are in a position to take seriously these words: “Police need to be trained and held accountable for excessive use of force. Unhoused individuals need help, not disrespect, not bullying, not to be arrested for sleeping in a public place, not to be shot and killed.”

David Chorlton