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poetry What’s in a Name?

Who is Jack Smith? asks the poet Carol Kanter. Cross your fingers. Is he the hero who shows that someone with a fancier name is not above the law? Look it up.

What’s in a Name?

                  (Oh, to Jack Smith)

 

By Carol Kanter

       

Our hero claims no Montague nobility.

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But he has surely garnered enemies,

entrenched and deaf as Capulets

to Juliette’s truth, to proof beyond

all doubt about a fellow’s worth. 

They rage, captured, blinded

by gold glitz, a-shimmy with

a glut of presumed power.

But now our Special guy

unmasks no-guilt pleas,

details crimes, insists

upon comeuppance

focused clearly on

Democracy, how

no one stands

above the law.

Bravo! Hope

dangles on 

a common

US family

name.

Carol Kanter’s poetry has appeared in over seventy literary journals and anthologies.  FinishingLine Press published her first two chapbooks: “Out of Southern Africa,” and “Chronicle of Dog.” Peterborough Poetry Project published her third, “Of Water.”  Carol and her photographer husband have paired poems and photographs from their travels and published them in four coffee-table type books.  (See www.DualArtsPress.com.) She is a

psychotherapist in private practice. She has a B.A. in biology, an M.A. in clinical social work, and a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology. Her book And Baby Makes Three explores the emotional transitions to parenthood.