1 – Philip Pearlstein, Whose Realist Nudes Revived Portraiture, Dies at 98 The other day, I found the New York Times obituary for Philip Pearlstein in a folder with the extremely unhelpful file name “Miscellaneous.” It was jammed in next to an article titled “Five Easy Exercises to Strengthen Your Abs.” Why I put it there, I don’t know. In the moment, I think I’ll never forget these things, but five minutes later, I do. I’ve always read obituaries in the morning with my coffee, after dividing up the paper and giving the front section to my husband, Stan. He…
The Coachella Review
After When I finally left the stage to little more than polite applause, I had no strength of will to wipe the makeup off, nor any desire to shed the costume as dear to me as skin. In years past, I’d have moved beyond today in minutes and stepped outside to take a long walk home—all thoughts on tomorrow, sure to be even better. Plans—I had them. A million ideas to sift through my hands like flour for bread dough. Where are they now? I sit and I wait for the crosstown bus. Another gargoyle decorating the bench just outside…
Interviewed by Breen Nolan Schoen Astrid Dahl, the protagonist of Anna Dorn’s third novel, Perfume & Pain, tries to be good, but her bad behavior keeps getting in the way. Recently canceled for saying something offensive at a book reading, Dahl suffers from writer’s block and is in search of inspiration through any means necessary—including toxic relationships with the wrong women, perfume, and a magic cocktail of drugs and booze. Written with Dorn’s distinctive humor, wry observations, and satirical pop culture commentary, Perfume & Pain further cements Dorn’s talent for rendering the millennial milieu. TCR caught up with Dorn to…
Thomas James Boudreau is a playwright whose plays include If I Cleaned Everything, No Jacket, The Campaign, and Astral Projection. His work has been staged by the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts and developed by the Actors Studio Drama School. Boudreau earned his BA in English from MCLA and is currently pursuing his MFA in Playwriting at the Actors Studio Drama School. He is also a member of the Dramatist’s Guild.
Granite with Pinon Freckles It’s possible the guy at the bar was just an admonishment. The rain and the heat were strips of plastic hanging in the doorway. A box of pizza left on a corner of the bar, and an electric pot of water with lukewarm hot dogs. You could smile. You could fit a balled hand in the cracked slats under the bar. No disorder, skipping along the CD jukebox. Packets of caffeine pills And Alka-Seltzer next to the money. Everyone switching seats as the night went on. But no one remembers names from those times. Was it…
Christine J. Schmidt writes in various mediums, but mostly plays and screenplays. Her work has been developed and produced at Skylight Theatre, Ammunition Theatre Company, Ensemble Studio Theatre/LA, The Blank, The Parsnip Ship, The NJ One-Minute Play Festival, and others. Her full-length play, Charlotte Stay Close, had its world premiere production at Ensemble Studio Theatre/LA in September 2019. She founded and was the co-program director of New West Playwrights, which was created to give voice to and foster the work of young playwrights in Los Angeles. More info at her website, or check out her Substack, Putting it Off.
Bethany Leigh Greenman is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, dramaturg, and stand-up comedian from New Jersey. She obtained her BFA in Playwriting at Ohio University. A Virginia Hahne scholarship recipient, she produced a reading of her full-length play, TEMPLE, at the Undergraduate Playwrights’ Festival. Since moving to Los Angeles, she has worked as a production assistant for multiple shows, including Abbott Elementary. She has also performed stand-up in multiple cities at various venues, including the Hollywood Improv. Most recently, she won the February 2024 Go Try PlayWrite Contest, presented by Kumu Kahua Theatre and Bamboo Ridge Press, for her monologue Lilies.
I heard when you got to New York you went about picking up every blonde woman in a white dress and a beret looking for me. I only knew of your dark leathery hand sliding into the ninth floor of my hotel window to cradle me like that night we met atop the world and you permitted me breathe in the palm of your hand like a goddess as you chewed large shoots of bamboo. In the heart of the jungle, I somersaulted to appease you. You could have eaten my skull, a large juicy olive. But people do not…
What She Doesn’t Want She doesn’t want to complain. That in itself makes things quite difficult. She only gets to walk the path of beauty once, and she doesn’t want to do it in rags. She doesn’t want a dog and she doesn’t want a gun, not even for protection. She doesn’t want to have to beg for light, and she doesn’t want to stumble in the dark. She doesn’t want to deal with people. She doesn’t want to be a willow to their wind and rain. She doesn’t want to talk about it. She doesn’t want to frighten the…
Gossip The man who lives in the shack in the woods is the planter of weeds. He wears a fisherman’s hat and carries a burlap satchel. When he steals chickens, he puts them in this satchel. When he steals eggs, he puts them in the hat. His heart is flies on a rotten apple. His ethics are the eyes of a dead sheep. He keeps a sharpened spoon in his back pocket. Sticks it in a man’s soul and takes its wallet. His ears are filled with thistle. Boils a brick for his dinner. His mother was a grackle. His father had pointed teeth.…
“How about you put the phone away while we eat?” I tell Beck. My words float up, accidental question mark dangling. “Ma, it’s for school,” Beck says without looking up from under his basketball hoodie. “Besides,” he waves his hand at the empty place-setting in front of me, “are you even eating?” The three of us sit at a round table in the center of a bustling Holiday Inn Express breakfast hall, boys’ jackets and backpacks strewn on chairs, their clunky boots jostling under the table. The air tastes like hot maple syrup. “Duh! She never eats breakfast!” Finn makes…
Her name was Facetia, or so she told me anyway. I met her on Interstate 10. She was hitchhiking, maybe stranded, and I was bored and curious, on my way to New Orleans from a city across the swamp. I had picked up hitchhikers before. So it wasn’t just because she was a young woman and reasonably attractive. But those other times, I’d been drinking, which I realize now made it a bad idea for both of us. I was barreling down the interstate in a mid-nineties Town Car—coal black. This was one of my rare excursions beyond the city’s…
Machinal Pull yourself together You did this to yourself You made it this way Tell the story The story of a helpless creature A being who did not ask for this Any of this Sometimes the stories we tell Are not just reflections of us Sometimes we create As a cry For help God help us all Why would you do this Why would you make something so horrible A living thing It lives and it lives to die It lives to bleed Scraping itself back together Wasting and wasting away It cannot help itself You cannot help it All…
All of this feeling, all of this wistful, all these memories in the shape of phantoms, the snakeskin of your arms around me? This nomadic heart which always finds its way back to you? The soft underbelly of rage, which was always secretly an armful of sorrow? A shrapnel of grief? A mouth like an open wound? Your name engraved on a hatchet? Your fingerprints, but all I could think about were your hands, your beautiful hands, how they hurt me, what am I supposed to do with all of this hurt? The nomenclature of the hatchet caked in dirt…
The stately burr oak stood deeply rooted in the center of our backyard, high up on the hillside. It shaded the patio from the midday summer sun and provided the perfect hideout for backyard games. I took its steady, reassuring presence for granted for the thirty years we lived under its canopy. When the tree’s bark started to peel, the young, lithe arborist led the way as we tromped through wild grasses and ground cover draping the steep, compact backyard. “It’s dying,” he said as he tugged at a strip of peeling skin. “Something damaged its roots.” “Dying?” I echoed,…
A Flat Tire You contemplate the car sitting back on its round rubber haunches as if it were some lame exotic animal, the last of its convertible kind. Pity in your eyes, you bite your round rubber lip and put your ear to the warm tire like a stethoscope to listen for the telltale hiss. You hope only to diagnose the cancer whose presence you can already sense. The sun is hot on your plastic neck. Giving up, you lean against the car door and fan yourself. You look up and down the flat, shimmering road and wait for someone…
חָרִיף Haifa, 1989 Philippe drizzles a greenish, garlicy hot sauce on his falafel. Between the torrid temperature and cayenne pepper paste, he is on fire. Watching him bite into the fried cumin-infused balls causes me to salivate. The thought of his thick, fleshy lips on mine creates inner heat. “Délicieux,” he says in his mother tongue. Beads of perspiration form on his forehead and trickle down his face. “Spicy food,” he says, “makes me sweat.” My senses are on high alert. Men and women, young and old, race to shop for Shabbat at the souk before stores close midafternoon. Stalls…
The guest-room wallpaper has a muted shine like expensive gift wrapping. The bed—which has been pushed to the back wall—is covered with bulging white pillows and a hand-hooked cotton coverlet. It is a feminine room, nicely appointed with dried flowers in pottery vases, vague and colorful prints on the wall, psychology books on a low shelf. Everything is as it should be except for the hospital bed, which dominates the limited floor space. This is the room where my brother lives now; sixty-one-years-old and a guest in his own house. It is the hand-holding room and the whispering room, the…
Black Houdini For a while, he’s been missing our Mheshimiwa— A shepherd unseen A leader heard A presence unfelt A true, black Houdini. Five party-branded calendars Cheap and unseemly Used and discarded After having angered our visitors Marred our living rooms. No word from his honorable person No help from his hired personnel. No progress report on his projects Stalled or otherwise No newsworthy mentions No fruitful radio discussions. A Harvard-educated marine biologist Who’s a mirage A myth A true lie, living and breathing— A ghost in his classy government-issued office at Continental House A stranger at his posh wananchi-built…
It wasn’t until the bachelorette partiers were on their third round of Never Have I Ever that Violet, sitting under the Cactus Cove’s pulsating array of strobe lights, looked around and realized she couldn’t find any hot guys anywhere. “Lemme see here,” said the bride-to-be Olivia, her eyes droopy. She’d already had a couple shots and some passion fruit rum drink from the bar and was starting to slur her words. “Never have I ever…done the mile-high club thing or whatever.” This resulted in an eruption of giggles, and at least three of the ladies threw back shots. Violet grimaced,…
I stood at the threshold of my daughter Eliza’s studio apartment, staring at a nude statue with enormous breasts and a giraffe-like neck that held open the apartment door. I tried not to study the statue, turning instead towards my daughter’s side of the room: a painting on the wall with zigzagging gray lines that wasn’t Eliza’s style, dresser tidy as usual. But no Eliza. Eliza’s roommate sat scribbling at a messy desk, her back to me, her side of the room filled with students who were bored or angry; I couldn’t tell which. Music blared. The whole place…
Plunging blade into white water, my older cousin leaves girlhood in the smooth wake of creamless strokes. Later, I creak the vanity open, knock over bottles and jars and hunt on Barbie-like tiptoes for the can of Barbasol. I fill the bath with water so hot it turns bathroom to cloud, perch along the lip of the tub— my father’s razor heavy with the weight of adolescent want. I will not ask anyone how—just lather, drag the blade, and slice shin into a strip…
The winter of 1989, it snowed on our yearly pilgrimage to Dotty’s. My grandmother, Dorothy, had asked me to call her Dotty years ago. “I am too young to be a grandmother,” she said in her smoker’s drawl. “No one would believe you. You may as well call me Dotty so as not to confuse anyone.” My mother and father begrudgingly made the trip despite the fact that Dotty despised my father for not being the rich man she wanted her daughter to marry. Our trips there were infrequent, but we always went on Christmas Eve. That was Dotty’s holiday,…
Aaron Cullers studied Writing for Film & Television at the Vancouver Film School and co-founded independent film team Pasquinade Films, which produced multiple feature-length and award-winning short films. Aaron’s screenwriting has been produced and screened at the New York International Independent Film Festival, Hondance, and others, while his stage work garnered a Best New Playwright award from the Fitton Center for the Creative Arts. One co-written film production, 7/11: The Hit Musical, had its global premiere listed by SPIN Magazine as a “Best Night Out.” He currently resides in Austin, Texas with his wife, two young children, and two…
I wanted to show my daughter something wild and free before it was too late. But I’m a shit mother, and that’s an inescapable fact. It’s in my bones, passed down in my family over hundreds of years, like other families pass down their sourdough starters. Rae was remarkably quiet on the drive south from Santa Cruz. I’d expected her to be happy about missing school, but she seemed to feel inconvenienced more than anything. She kept letting out perturbed little sighs like an old woman. “Do you know where we’re going, Rae?” I asked. I wanted her to talk,…
Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence I’ve been a bird since Tuesday. That’s the day Lucy usually comes over. She couldn’t make it this week and at first, I was glad. I didn’t want her to see me like this, even though it was all her idea. Now it’s Friday and I’m enjoying myself. The tickling sensation is almost gone and I’m luxuriating in my own softness. This afternoon I thought, the equivalent of feathers would have to be angora. I feel like I’m wearing the softest sweater, only in this case, I am…