Category: Non-Fiction

  • Basil

    I BUY A BASIL plant for the summer. The plant had stood alone, perched on a barren shelf at Trader Joe’s—lush, a tempting canopy cloud of green. I do not expect it to last the summer, not weeks of leading hiking and camping trips for middle-schoolers throughout the High Sierras of California. But my heart…

  • Maximum Compound: Valentine’s Day Belongs to the She-Wolf

      Clinton, New Jersey   She’s really beautiful. Can you find some I Love You Cards and send them to her and just sign my name? I have a teddy bear being made and a matching ring earring and necklace set. –Krystal Riordan, Inmate #661387   & Seen from the air, the Edna Mahan Correctional…

  • Maximum Compound: Valentine’s Day Belongs to the She-Wolf

      Clinton, New Jersey   She’s really beautiful. Can you find some I Love You Cards and send them to her and just sign my name? I have a teddy bear being made and a matching ring earring and necklace set. –Krystal Riordan, Inmate #661387   & Seen from the air, the Edna Mahan Correctional…

  • The Sadness Scale, As Measured by Stars and Whales

    It’s easy enough to find, sadness, for there are so many stories of it disseminated on social media we might all stay quivering in our small rooms for as much time as we have left. In only the last week, besides the politics and polemics, the pipe bombs and opioid epidemic, I’ve learned that we…

  • Turtle’s Reunion Tour

    Turtle, Senator and I sat at a table at the Beachcomber on Wollaston Beach while the redheaded guitar player, billed as The President of Rock ‘n’ Roll, roared: There’s a riot goin’ on! Down in cellblock number nine. I was in the slammer with Albert DiSalvo, shouted Senator over the music. He nodded his head…

  • JAIL-BRED

    The 200 best inmates lived on E Block—said the 200 inmates living on E Block. They called it the honor block. The going-home block. The free-to-roam block. And only the jail-good inmates came out to free-roam. E Block’s counselor left their files behind the desk so I saw what I worked with: third-degree murderers, five-D.U.I.…

  • VIGNETTES FROM 28,065 NIGHTS

    The First Day of Our Second Year Without You We visited your grave on Christmas Eve. Elliott helped me find you like we were playing hide and seek. Is Granny over here? No… Is Granny over there? We found you surrounded by poinsettias and candy canes. Elliott picked up a small branch and traced your…

  • DOCTOR, DOCTOR

    He was dissecting a cat when I arrived for the interview. The lab-coated doctor sat hunched over the splayed legs of an immobilized gray kitty. I looked away. This wasn’t what I had signed up for. He was supposed to be a neurologist, not a vet. “You the gal they sent to take Mary’s place?”…

  • TREAT ME LIKE MAGMA

    Prose is a trap, my professor looks up from her computer when she says this.  She has a tendency to hit realizations so simply— it doesn’t feel like a realization.  Prose is inherently patriarchal, and I will never be able to escape it as long as I continue to rely on this demand, on these…