David Chester
Introduction to the Late Summer
Issue
During my first semester of law school, we studied a case in which a
man was walking past a downtown hotel when a large piece of furniture
came falling from the window of one of the upper floors and landed on
him. Predictably, a lawsuit followed. Though the person who tossed the
sofa from the window--employee, patron, interior decorator--was never
identified, the hotel was found to be liable for the injuries since the
specific "culprit" was irrelevant to the legal analysis: the hotel had a
legal duty to make sure that settees couldn't be hoisted from windows
onto the heads of passersby. Period. All that the pedestrian--or his
surviving family--had to prove to win their case was that the furniture
fell from the hotel window and hit him. This is known as the theory of
res ipsa loquitor: the thing speaks for itself. I bring
this up not because the phrase appears in Rachel Flynn's wonderful poem,
"Red Brick Hungry," but because there is little I can say to expound
upon the poems and short-shorts contained in this volume.
The work speaks for itself.
Nonetheless, my being trained in the practice of law prevents me from
holding my tongue without adding that, of the great many wonderful
submissions I received, my fancy was arrested by Steve Bellin's moving
poems on crime and punishment; John E. Branseum's stark work on
lawlessness; Mark Budman's surprising short-short portraying a lawyer's
home life; Claudette Cohen's painfully truthful look at law, politics,
and human desire; Brandon Cornett's whimsically haunting tale of a life
after law; Rachel Flynn's generous poetic journey through the law and
all places near and far; Hooshla Fox's clever short-short on the law's
pushing people to their limits; Michael Ives' views of time measured by
justice and laws immutable; Kate Lutzner's poignant look at
victimization; Valerie MacEwan's amusingly truthful look at
small-law-firm life; John Poch's what-I-wish-I'd have-said run-in with
the law; Tracy Scarpino's delightfully imaginative short-short on a law
of physics; Richard K. Weems' absurdist imprisoned duo; and Joan
Wilking's child's-eye-view. The work is imaginative, truthful, funny,
tragic and, above all, it speaks for itself.
So, enjoy it, and I'll shut up now.
David Chester is a poet, an actor, and a lawyer, in that order. He
lives in Florida with his poet wife and objectively adorable genius
daughter.
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