Christopher’s crying in the stairwell. He’s been at it for hours. I’m concerned about what the neighbors will think, but also I don’t care, so I shut the door and fall back into bed. I turn and press my head into the pillow. I bury it so far, it’ll never be found, and just when I’ve reached the lowest point, the door across the landing opens then shuts, and there’s a knock. “Samuel.” It’s a mirage. I pull the blanket over my head. “Sam.” Fitch stands outside the door in his tighty-whities. I can see more than I want. “What,…
The Coachella Review
Mr. B When I asked Mr. B about solar wind, he said there was no such thing, in front of the whole class. I was pretty sure he was wrong, and he was: solar wind is a stream of charged particles, mostly protons, released from the upper atmosphere of the sun and permeating the whole solar system. You can harness it, like these kids in a story I’d read about a regatta in space. Their sail unfurled for half a mile, glittering in the blackness. But I don’t blame Mr. B. The universe is vast and beautiful and full of…
For most of a minute, the tenor splits his stare between his phone and the lake view framed by the minivan’s windshield. Then he sets the device in the cupholder. The other three members of the group wait in silence. Finally, from the back seat, the bass speaks. “What’s it say?” The tenor swallows. “It was all a joke.” “That doesn’t make sense,” says the baritone from behind the steering wheel. “They sent the down payment. The money’s already in our accounts.” “The groom hates acapella,” explains the tenor. “When he found out the best man hired us, he made…
This year, the front yard is a garden gone wild. An unruly thing. A bobbing field of bitter arugula. The herbage is higher than my waist. The sunflowers are already taller than me, and the bushy hop vine reached the top of its pole weeks ago. The intersection, an offset, four-way stop, is surrounded on three corners by mature trees: maple, birch, a giant conifer. Their leaves flutter in the breeze. When I look out at the whole scene and let my eyes soften, it becomes a placid green blur. I love the yard untamed. The plum tree, still young,…
Sink into your parents’ plastic pool, painted mosaics on polypropylene liner, PVC flamingo floats, neon orange rafts turn your skin whiter (exsanguinate eyelids, cheekbones keen), cherry stone freckles sit– mistaken unsinkable seeds. For all of the Sylvias shivering away ventricle remnants of nostrum– (remember when you went around the world?) please don’t end here. Come out from under– water, wherever– transmute mystical to untroubled duck– firm every hollow bone from wonder bread, quaggy reeds, iridescent fishes– I write you back to life, wish you wings– take to the unchlorinated air, resist gravity, rise downside-up, and sprout to sky–…
“The University of Redlands held a commencement ceremony Monday to honor its ailing mascot Thurber following his cancer diagnosis, which was made public last week… Those close to the pup, including handler Beth Doolittle, praised the dog’s contributions to the university. Thurber was then presented with a diploma representing his degrees in math and psychology, and a minor in theater and human-animal studies.” ~Kristina Hernandez, Redlands Daily Facts, November 13, 2017 The glow of Madison’s phone lit the tears that ran down her face as she sat in the dark. It was always like this with her. A mixture of…
Gianfranco Lentini is an NYC-based queer playwright, teacher, journalist, and First Generation Italian American. Gianfranco’s work has been developed and produced by Torrent Theatre, UNDER St. Marks Theatre, A Night of Play, Theatrical Response Team, Burlington County Footlighters, and the inspiraTO Festival (Canada’s largest short play festival). His work has been published by Molecule Literary Magazine and The Coachella Review. He is currently an Adjunct Professor for New York University’s New Studio on Broadway’s Summer Program and a Teaching Representative for the Theatre Development Fund’s Wendy Wasserstein Project. You can learn more about Gianfranco’s work at heygianfranco.com and on Instagram at @HeyGianfranco.
Have you ever seen the sun set through the grip of a palm frond? The way tangerine and lavender cuts through the leaves? The way the leaves cut through flesh if pressed? A young frond emerges folded, the area called the cabbage. The city skyline is littered with sharp cabbages tilting their heads. I once saw an overgrown palm drop with a sigh. The serrated green landed on the hood of a parked car. I’ve seen them come and go, another season another family of owls nesting in the highest tuft, their quiet life like a poem, pollen hanging on…
Out at the barbecue, Abel puts everything he has into commandeering tri-tips around the grill, flipping one steak, sliding to the next, elbows akimbo, spatula flashing, trying to lose himself in the sizzle and burn. Then the heat sears too close and he pulls back, squeezing his watering eyes shut. He can’t shut out what he just learned, though, one more thing he didn’t know about his father’s secret life. “Come on honey, party’s on.” His wife’s voice lilts across the yard. Abel opens his eyes to find Jodie waving at him from the deck where she’s serving a gang…
We’d looked all over the house for Dad, gone down to the basement, up to the second floor, the attic even, taken flashlights out and paced the edges of the freshly mown yard, poked around in the toolshed, even sent John to the top of the maple-crowned hill overlooking the old apple orchard where Dad used to set up his easel for landscapes, but there’d been neither hide nor hair until Gayle had glanced out the backdoor one last time, on the verge of giving up, and spotted him there at the edge of the trees. The yellow light…
Daniil Lebedev is a writer and filmmaker. Born in Novosibirsk, Russia, he studied literature and cinema in Paris. He is the author of experimental and documentary films, as well as several works for theatre. He currently lives in Strasbourg. danlebedev.com
The people voted and assigned power to the Universal Equality Party. At nine o’clock, the polling stations closed, and at nine o’clock plus one the results began to flood in to the media, who then flooded them out to the public. At nine o’clock plus fifteen it was already a reportable majority and then a massive majority. The incumbents were out, humbled by the numbers and newly unemployed. “We have heard you loud and clear,” the new Leader bellowed in the acceptance speech. “You are frustrated by the years of elitism, of riches held in the fewest of hands while…
the game got played on heart-gazing nights dreaming this body transposed among las estrellas otras & how much brighter they sound in that disinherited cosmos still looking ever up, seeking constellation coordinates where this vessel might collapse distances built between each tip of an asking tongue: when can i say encontré mi lugar cosmica? cuantos sueños will it take? Jason Baltazar is a proud Salvadoran American, originally from the Appalachian corner of Maryland. His work has or will appear in Boston Review, Salt Hill, Wigleaf, and elsewhere. He teaches creative writing and literature at James Madison University. For more info,…
Kerry Muir’s prose has appeared in Kenyon Review, Crazyhorse, Fourth Genre and elsewhere. Her essay “The Bridge” was named as a notable in Best American Essays 2016, edited by Edwidge Danticat, as was her essay “Blur” in Best American Essays 2018, edited by Hilton Als. Her plays have received awards and honors from Nantucket Short Play Festival & Competition, Gibraltar International Drama Festival, The Great Platte River Playwrights Festival, Maxim Mazumdar New Play Competition, and elsewhere. Her play, Esme & Jasper, Out to Sea received an honorable mention on The Kilroys’ THE LIST. Her play The Night Buster Keaton Dreamed Me was published in a bilingual English-Spanish edition…
rejection She is forty and has no right to apply to Columbia. She doesn’t have the youth, the money, the looks, the prestige, the background, the career, the sidewalks, the parents, the network, the status, the sidewalks, the youth, the smarts, the money, the money, the money, Yet, there she is, on a Saturday afternoon, after a full week teaching ninth grade reading, typing away her weekends on a fruitless, hopeless, vain and stupid vision. An…
And then came the rain and you wondered if that was a light at the end of the tunnel? Or was it just an expiring cruise missile on the Left Bank of the Dnieper River. In the corner of your eye an antimissile aircraft immediately intercepted it, you merely blink your awe away. Meanwhile, the honeysuckle blooms profusely this summer, as if making up for time lost. Yours and mine. Writing this with pen and paper in the split seconds of one air-raid siren after another cautioning you to retire to your useless lair in between your tiled woodstove…
I wonder where’d all this water come from? Even though you complain about my oily hair, the dirt beneath my nails, you still hate the water bill the most and I don’t blame you I blame the rivers we’re stealing from Because they’re all speaking French and seductively tongues the syllables of suburban homes for soil and call it Gardening You force me to smile with my teeth, Say I didn’t get you braces for anything I remember to pay back everything you’ve ever given me when I am a millionaire When I watch you from my window, I joke…
The first thing I learn from running on the treadmill at the gym while watching cable television is that you should not be at the gym watching cable television on a Friday night. There is no wait for a treadmill, but there is also nothing entertaining on, even if your idea of entertaining is watching Jon Taffer scold small business owners on AMC’s Bar Rescue, or Ree Drummond prepare Chicken Enchilasagna for her husband, Ladd, on Food Network’s The Pioneer Woman. From the hours of 6–9 p.m., your best option is likely HGTV’s My Lottery Dream Home, which, despite the…
Sean Dance Fannin is a queer dramatist born and raised in Kentucky and writes plays aimed at dismantling cynicism and apathy as an antidote to fascism. Sean’s play Dead Wait received its premiere in Kentucky, followed by the development of The Airplane Game with Derby City Playwrights in Louisville. After moving to Chicago in 2021, he began producing and hosting the podcast Come and See, aimed at persuading book readers to read published plays as literature; at this time, he also started the blog Wasted on Worry and Willing to Wilt, comprised of short and unique theatrical concepts. In 2022…