I dried violets, roses and four-leaf clovers
in his textbook of torts, heavy press.
The lawyer was done with it.
I had no need to read it.
My wrongs were not illegal.
Decades later when I turned it in
to the second-hand store, impressions
of juiciness had faded, and brown
residues of luck and love mocked
the book and me who took so long to see
that a perfect book of torts is worth
less than one experienced.
Tricia Knoll
Tricia Knoll's is a Vermont poet whose work appears widely in journals, anthologies, and five collections of poetry including Checkered Mates (Kelsay Books) which came out in 2021 and Let's Hear It for the Horses (The Poetry Box) available February 1, 2022 and which took third place in the press' 2020 chapbook contest. Her work has been nominated for 9 Pushcart Prizes and her collection How I Learned To Be White received the 2018 Human Rights Indie Book Award for Motivational Poetry. Knoll is a contributing editor to Verse Virtual. Website: triciaknoll.com
