By the Maenad There are four children playing on the playground below my office window. (The same one that was the target of a drive-by shooting a few weeks ago.) I heard the recognizable sounds of a familiar script being shouted and went to my window. No cops but The four children down there are [...]
By Pat Andrus For Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, George Floyd, seven-year-old Aiyana Mo’Nay Stanley-Jones, Eric Garner, Dante Parker, Atatiana Jefferson, ninety-two-year-old Kathryn Johnston . . . A broken baton a dead rat 5 jailers with guns. How the life loses its state of pure being. How a bone breaks and one rose falls. [...]
By Christie Valentin-Bati “It is 2020. Everything is canceled except for police terror.” –Nick Estes They said close down everything non-essential: The coffee shop, blue trimmed with a green porch, white-potted flowers that hung down from the awning, closed – so I roasted my own coffee. The outlet mall with high-waisted jeans, gold-plated, pearl earrings [...]
By Christa Miller After ten days of scavenging around the houses in our subdivision, I know it’s unsustainable. Zoe and I had started with the houses next door, then worked our way down the street, but we were walking farther and farther for less and less. I decide to head for Myrtle Beach, but Zoe [...]
By Keith Welch We'd like to think that all our cops are fearless that their well-trained minds are sharp and quick but certainly they're worse than useless unless they can tell a pistol from a stick Or when a suicidal person's begging for an ending to their tortured grief does a policeman's duty include abetting desire [...]
