‘THE DEFINITION OF EMPTY’

University of New Mexico Press (2021, 66 pp.)

“All of us can be pushed too far, and recourse is

What adolescence is.”

The professional narrator of these poems about troubled youth sits on the parole board that is supposed to assess their suitability in rejoining society after sprees of criminality. In this case, “Fourth of July in New Mexico,” a rancher boy has shot his father, stepmother and stepsister for a longstanding grievance, buried them in the manure bin, before driving to his girlfriend’s house in the dad’s pickup for a game of basketball.

Taking to the streets when life at home becomes unbearable (Rosita in “Poetry at the Juvie”); molested by relatives, shot by a gang, “struggling though several medications/intended to erase what has come his way” (“Castillo”); reading a letter of apology to the family of his friend who died in the fatal joy ride when he was at the wheel (“Cody”); recalling the constant pressure of being high (“Kimberly”) — these are heart-wrenching dispatches from youth scrambling to regain control of their lives.

Author Bill O’Neill, a New Mexico state senator, draws deeply from his own experience as Gov. Bill Richardson’s appointee to the state juvenile parole board. His first-person narrator also inserts elements of his childhood experience — a kid dared to do things that might become his own “public tragedy.”

He is among a committee of juvenile justice professionals who are trying to do the right thing. The kids who stand before them are nervous, humbled, on wholly different kinds of meds now, and their testimonials eloquent.

“And now, in that moment of collision between

Intention and bad personal history, Castillo adds

Quietly: ‘Sir, I have to believe there is Something else … I have to.’”