By Avra Margariti A lullaby—seductive, hypnopaedic—slinks through the high security ward of the women’s prison. Morrigan, the phantom queen whistling between sharp teeth her very own Cell Block Tango, banshee call to arms. The doors all open wide locks broken, passwords hacked, guard uniforms painted red with life, never to be washed clean again. The [...]
By Jill McDonough The boys in my local juvie want to work one on one, write stories, poems, mark up the stuff I give them. More than one kid at a time’s less fun: more fussing, more holding back to show how tough they are. When one of them writes on the other’s paper the [...]
By Susan Kelly-DeWitt I think of him as a victim (a veteran) of war— every day was the enemy in a house- hold that thought children should be punished with barbed wire, belts, burns, punches, pinches, slaps, kicks, starvation. Where meth was the vitamin, sex was the money, where poverty was the neighborhood, poverty was [...]
By Jack Mackey In the Oval Office dripping in rehearsed applause from the full-pocketed and the bloated paid to do a job by corporate wardens enriched by a three-strike law that scooped up traffic violators like escaped farm animals surrounded by billionaire brothers who bought a conscience on closeout after years of dictating to lap [...]
