Crime

Bars

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0400

On a playground, at a gymnastics meet, over an apartment window

Pockets

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 12:00:00 -0500

Shoplifting cigarettes, running the pool table, creating a “pocket prairie”

Expats

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 12:00:00 -0500

Rhonda tended to take in people—and cats, Jessica said. Spending about $150 of her monthly Social Security check on cat food, in addition to supporting her meth habit, had left her broke most of the time.

Love in All Directions

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 12:00:00 -0500

Sometimes you had to conjure your own joy. Scratch that. Most of the time you had to conjure your own joy. So you had better suck it up and start chopping onions.

The Golden Door

mcdermon@gmail.com — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 12:00:00 -0400

Our nation’s founders attained political power by invading this land, killing most of the people who were already living in it, stealing large swaths of land from other countries, and then saying, “This is ours, and no one else can come in.” It’s hard to defend that moral claim.

At Union Square Park

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 12:00:00 -0400

A buck isn’t enough for his cup, this ex-con / wants a five, yelling for every passerby to stop / and read his Rikers wristband. // Look hard. Harder, he demands as he points.

Thievery

Mon, 31 Mar 2025 12:00:00 -0400

I was sure I'd heard our front gate squeal and rattle. We live on a tree-lined Chicago street where 6 AM on Sunday is the time for arriving home from the night shift or heading out to the early shift or, in the case of a very few early risers, walking a dog.

After All This

Fri, 31 Jan 2025 12:00:00 -0500

When twenty first graders were slaughtered and the country responded without a national gun-buyback program, national red-flag laws, universal background checks, a national wait period, a gun registry, an assault-weapons ban, disarming all domestic abusers, ending legal immunity for gun manufacturers, instituting mandatory yearly classes for gun ownership (list all your ideas that could help here), we became complicit.

To the Arresting Officer

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 12:00:00 -0500

You patted me down roughly, went through my pockets and pulled out three crumpled twenties, some guitar picks, my stepfather’s pocketknife. “You got drugs, son?”

Bone Frag

petercstenson@yahoo.com — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 12:00:00 -0400

There are countless theories about the origins of the pebble storms. The one that makes the most sense to me is something about melting ice caps and ocean acidification and dying coral reefs.

Penumbra

Mon, 30 Sep 2024 12:00:00 -0400

If Roe was created in the liminal space of the penumbra, Dobbs is the total eclipse that makes all go dark.

Athens, Revised

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 12:00:00 -0400

Perhaps you know where this is going, or think you do. I do not. I decide the man is just being hospitable, like all the Greeks I’ve met during my ten days traveling through the country. As we disembark from the ferry, he says he is a father, recently divorced, and was raised in Athens, where his mother still lives. He is on his way there to visit her.

Longshanks

Thu, 29 Feb 2024 05:00:00 -0500

The elf hits me doing what feels like eighty, blowing through the light at the new intersection by the outlet mall. One of his headlights glances off mine, and he swerves on two wheels before slamming into a construction barricade with the sound of a typewriter dropped off a roof. No seat belt: he is thrown from the car and sails into the desert.

A Face In Judgment

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 04:00:00 -0400

A young man stands at the lectern: nineteen years old, athletic, thick black hair down to his shoulders. I’ll call him Marco. Today my job is to decide whether to send him to prison.

Some Thoughts On Mercy

Wed, 31 May 2023 04:00:00 -0400

When we have mercy, deep and abiding change might happen.

A Sandwich Is A Concept

Tue, 31 Jan 2023 05:00:00 -0500

Our biggest fear was dogs. Ronnie and I looked up dog facts like maniacs. Can dogs smell through plastic? Does the USPS use drug dogs? How do you trick drug dogs? How effective are drug dogs? Are drug dogs a scam that the government uses to justify illegal searches?

Bikes

Thu, 30 Jun 2022 04:00:00 -0400

Learning to ride, falling down, getting back on

Late Delivery

Tue, 31 May 2022 04:00:00 -0400

My mother didn’t raise a thief, but by the time you round forty, you’re pretty much raising yourself. I scooped the package from its hiding place, then waved my free hand at the doorbell camera.

The Devil Takes Back

Fri, 31 Dec 2021 05:05:00 -0500

No one would admit that they’d stolen my phone, so Manager threatened to call a juju priest to settle the issue spiritually.

Precarious

Thu, 25 Feb 2021 05:15:00 -0500

“Imagine if we’d known,” I said. “If you’d had a diagnosis, you could have been given lithium or something to help you.” Joan lifted her hands to her face and sobbed.

Unstacking The Deck

Thu, 25 Feb 2021 05:00:00 -0500

By conservative estimates, there are currently enough wrongfully convicted people in prison in the United States to fill a football stadium.

Sunbeams

Thu, 25 Feb 2021 05:00:00 -0500

Laws, it is said, are for protection of the people. It’s unfortunate that there are no statistics on the number of lives that are clobbered yearly as a result of laws: outmoded laws; laws that found their way onto the books as a result of ignorance, hysteria, or political haymaking; antilife laws; biased laws; laws that pretend that reality is fixed and nature is definable. . . . A survey such as that could keep a dozen dull sociologists out of mischief for months.

Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

At The Arraignment

Thu, 25 Feb 2021 05:00:00 -0500

Which of us has never broken a law? / I died for you — a desperate extravagance, even for me. / If you can’t be merciful, at least be bold.

The Most Dangerous Place

Tue, 01 Sep 2020 00:00:00 -0400

Another woman’s husband got a rattlesnake and kept it in a cage at home. He would threaten to put it in the bed or the shower with her. That kind of emotional torture needs no physical violence.

Sunbeams