New lamb, slick with amniotic fluid Clings to her old world She can’t bear the loss of that perfect roundness, of her delicate, self-sustaining planet...

It’d been almost ten years since Officer Burrow—now Sergeant—arrested me for simple battery and underage consumption. I was seventeen and already an alcoholic, already a pimple-faced delinquent held t...

I look to my left, towards my neighbor on the shore. He’s a writer I recognize from the mainland, the author of Abuelita’s Ashes. It was well received, shortlisted for a few awards. He sees me. “Negri...

J Journal is a literary magazine featuring fiction, poetry and personal narrative, all quietly justice-themed. Housed at CUNY’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, J Journal examines its subject dir...

On my one and only trip through “the system,” I didn’t get any jail time. I was a first-time offender, and someone—white, middle class—the judges didn’t see as a criminal. They gave me community servi...

By the close of New Year’s Day 2030, every human inhabitant of the planet Earth had been fingered. It was no longer a big deal for anyone to cock thumb and extend index finger as if they comprised a real pistol and, with a simple BANG, shoot someone dead...

I would venture nearly everyone harbors some affront. An indignity that sides us instantly with the beleaguered— with the downtrodden, horses old and gaunt, lone woman on the board...

In this standoff there is cold, hard cash  on the plaster stove &  I look him in the eye. A magazine falls somewhere and he’s screaming louder now, his back to me, don’t take it don’t take it so I tak...

Richard is standing at the trail’s edge, one he would often run when he’d lived in the Bronx, before moving to lower Manhattan. The turns are unfamiliar, winding in directions he doesn’t recall...

Lewie hunches over his boxy camera in one of the photo booths that have been gouged into the courtroom walls at Nuremberg. Peering through the rear screen of his Speed Graphic, he focuses on the Ameri...

a picture on Facebook of the pumpkin latte I bought with money Juliet sent me but now it’s my profile picture Then I tried to write a post...

It would be nice to talk to him again. A nice, normal drink with an old friend. There weren’t many people I felt like seeing these days, and even fewer places I felt like going...

The inside of the car is dark. Aspen trees with their white bodies flash by the passenger window. They frighten you, but you don’t tell your father whose smells of sweat, cigarettes, and whiskey you’v...

Beyond the headline-grabbing accomplishments in grotesquerie, he is most vividly known for his habit of so fondly fondling his shotgun while his femme du jour gave him head, finally squeezing the trig...

After Grandma died my sister said, We need to send Uncle Larry cards, keep him happy, and I said, I don’t think that he was ever happy and she said, We should all send him cards even just postcards an...

Which pickle to pick is not fit for childish deliberations, especially when pecks of pickles have picked this child and that and their mamas and daddies and their whole generations. Of the pickles you...

I was at my girlfriend’s when she got a call from a friend whose car had run out of gas, and this friend wanted Katie—that’s my girlfriend—to—and because her friend was pretty much shouting through th...

“You’re not breathing,” my mother said. A voice coach who teaches Suits and Baby MBAs how to speak in public, she’s an expert on the way nerves shut down air intake. I couldn’t tell her that at that m...

Printed paper with paper clips and Pencil on paper in artist’s frame Cady Noland American, born 1956 The Museum of Modern Art, New York City Squeaky said she was serious but also having fun...

I should throw it away. Nubbed and frayed from all the cycles. The thrashing and the tumbling.  This shabby robe that robs the dignity of my undressing. This effigy that hangs on tatty sleeves. These ...

Before my mother, there had been another woman, Britannia, whom my father loved and married when they were both in their twenties. After a brief courthouse ceremony with three friends as witnesses, th...

So I left Lady for good then got off the bus. It felt right, leaving Lady Prananda. Plus I thought no way sadness is not not not going to happen to this girl right here so I dropped her for good, my s...

wine why my tastes tonight run more for rye or whisky my throat demands that burn fire water which helps me forget my world wines for therapy not for forgetting a night from wine put this mark upon me...

Five Stars—Excellent Tour and driver/guide The road took us into the island where we came across Victory. He held a pointed staff and left footprints long and vehicular. Victory spoke very good Englis...

Every day, at nine in the morning, Mr. Ghosh got his mustache trimmed while waiting for things to happen. Betel juice dripped from one side of his paan-stained lips, his backside comfortably lodged on...

Callie landed just after eleven o’clock in the morning. Immigration was easy—the guy glanced at her picture and grinned. Her bag came out third. She had nothing to declare...

J Journal is a literary magazine featuring fiction, poetry and personal narrative, all quietly justice-themed. Support the literary arts and purchase the latest issue.

how can it be as the mind moves the tongue moves somewhere near the flock a falcon is (the flock loses no information) How can it be...

“Death Sentence: Poetry Consolation II” is a poem constructed by artificial intelligence algorithms based on the prison writings...

It came to pass that I was asked to assist the executor of a modest last will and testament. The problem was that I had become intimately...

Our first night in the new house, we hear creaking that sounds a lot like footsteps, but that vanishes before we can really worry...

We have packed it away in the dark of the messiest closet of mind to be lost in the wrack of remembrance...

When I was younger, I stood on a mountain of pillows with a brave decision to swallow a whole finger. My father insulted me because...

Everyone was antsy, sitting on the front porch, the kids picking at the chipped paint with the toes of their sneakers...

Tucked away in the university’s bowels, he toils away in thermal paper dreams masquerading as headstones of campus dining events...

for the sounds of ordinary things manhandled with too much force. Relentless, yet sporadic thwok bumf sclitch drundun percussion of...