An Indeterminate SHU

An Indeterminate SHUChilled gusts slice through razor wirecreeping around the window's edgelike ants teeming over breadcrumbs.Rats intrepidly stalk the tier sniffingremnants of tonight's repast. I pay them no heed.I… More

Fair Well

Sunbeams escaped from the free world and drifted into my cell through the bars and laid beside me sharing my bunk in the summer of 1989. It was a… More

Day One

There I stood in that cavernous hallway, handcuffed to someone I didn’t know and probably never wanted to know. About twenty of us just standing there, scared half to… More

Knowing a Place

You can’t love a place unless you know itreally know it like you were born theremoved there young had time to explorewalk the streets talk to the peopleNew… More

Paralegal Training for the Formerly Incarcerated

The Paralegal Training for the Formerly Incarcerated (PTFI) is a job-skills training initiative. The program offers a certified paralegal training to formerly incarcerated individuals and helps with job placement.… More

Doing Time

Doing TimeSunday evening Mom and Dad unwind on the couch,her full black hair lays against Dad’s shoulder.The iconic stopwatch fills the screen, the second handsweeps north, folding its final… More

Forest Clayton

The FanOn my mother’s dresserSits an old brittle photographThat flirts with the fan thatWas bought to soothe pain.Shadows hide behind her curtains;They sneak peeks to see if sheWill ever… More

Fried Mushrooms

My mother is the kind of woman/ who buys fried mushrooms/ with her last five dollars/ on the way home/ from a listless day waiting/ for nothing/ at the… More

Turds

Scene 1The setting is a street corner in a residential neighborhood of the mid-1960s. The corner of a lawn enclosed in a picket fence is down right. A street… More

Just Another Death

I sit on my bunk as the minutes tick by. The count should have cleared over half an hour ago. Something’s up. In a place where timing and routine… More