Review by Laurie Kuntz
“Put back together by poetry…” is a poignant line from the About the Author paragraph, which is on the last page of Susan’s Vespoli’s book: One of Them Was Mine. This powerful book is a collection of poems about a mother losing a son to drugs, homelessness, and police brutality.
The dedication reads:
“This book is dedicated to my son Adam Vespoli who was shot and killed by police on March 12, 2022.”
The dedication alone sends the reader reeling. The titles of the poems, “Letter to my Son’s Too Short Life,” “My Son As Hummingbird” “Burning Coal,” “Food Bank,” “My Son No Longer Missing,” and “20 Photos from Police Records of His Last Night Alive” make one cringe at the scenarios of what is to follow. These titles are a recipe for the most engaging and heart-wrenching poems. Each poem in this memorable book is a warning and a blessing wrapped in a fist of yearning for a son to survive, for his memory to have meaning, for love not to flee, and for a mother, shrouded in loss, to somehow remain hopeful, active and alive to tell her son’s important story. The reader cannot look away.
An example of this yearning is stunningly depicted in “Blessing at 4:00 a.m.—April 1, 2022,”
…Today when it is not yet light.
When it is another 24-four anniversary
of the unanswered call, the pleading voicemail.
*
… Let the sky bless
all on the earth who sleep in underpasses,
city busses, along the canal. Let its clouds
and rainbows, sunrises, sunsets, moon
and stars be the roof over all heads
and let all beings feel safe and whole,
not answering to substance, to bullet, badge, or fist.
Vespoli’s poems are a composite of how the grief stricken wearing a cloak of continued sadness live and continue in the roles they inhabit. In her poem “Self Portrait of a Mother in Chapters,” the poet tackles this task of everyday survival, and in this poem and in every poem, she tries to reach the finish line of closure. Closure of acceptance, of grief, of how to continue, of how to bless each day of loss with memories that honor a treasured son’s life, a life which should have had the chance to continue in joy and in love and in acceptance, every mother’s dream for her child.
The Dead aren’t actually dead, you know; they are with us as energy.
Write about him, she said, you are called to do this.
The almost invisible hair on my forearms becomes a field of grass
blown by gentle wind. (“What the Medium Said” pg 50)
This book is an artistic and honest work of a person broken and pieced together again through poems that rip the heart open so that the essence of truth, love, and acceptance can once again enter. This moving and engaging collection is a mother’s very brave and honest gift to a son’s memory.
“Open my eyes to find I am in a dark
room with my dogs snoring nearby. Remember he is dead, the dream
of him a visit, a gift, my pillowcase wet.” (“A Gift” pg 74)
Vespoli parts the sections of her book with direct quotes from her son taken from various points and stages in his life. These quotes are windows to who she lost and how her son would want her to survive without him. Part I opens with her son’s text message from 2021: “I want to share it with the world someday and I believe that is part of my purpose.”
One of Them Was Mine is a book that shares. Love and loss, pain and pleasure are all wrapped in an honestly told collection about love for a son who is forever etched in remarkable, memorable, and poignant poetry.
One of Them Was Mine by Susan Vespoli
Kelsay Books Publisher, 2023. 91 pages, 20.00 paper
97816398036613
Laurie Kuntz is a four time Pushcart Prize nominee and two time Best of the Net Nominee. In 2024, she won a Pushcart Prize. She published six books of poetry. Her latest That Infinite Roar, published by Gyroscope Press. Her themes come from working with Southeast Asian refugees, living as an expatriate in Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Brazil, and raising a husband and son.