Author’s Note: At the end of July 2018, I served two weeks on jury duty in Kings County, New York. The charge was attempted murder, the defendant a young, black male. However, I was selected for jury duty as an alternate, meaning I would attend every session of the trial but when it came time to deliberate, I, and the other alternates, would have no input on the potential verdict, would be placed in a separate room altogether during the deliberation. The “alternate” poems that follow (part of 14-poem sequence thus far) seeks to interrogate the numerous challenges of that experience.
They said I was an alternate
They said I was an alternate,
They said I was an alternate
Considering Sergeant Al Powell Now 30 Years Later
Nathan McClain is the author of Scale (Four Way Books, 2017), a recipient of fellowships from Sewanee Writers’ Conference, The Frost Place, and the Bread Loaf Writer’ Conference, and a graduate of Warren Wilson’s MFA Program for Writers. His poems and prose appear in New York Times Magazine, Poem-a-Day, The Common, upstreet, and The Rumpus, among others. He teaches at Hampshire College.