Emma Cort (she/her) is a 20-year-old actor, writer, and director from Center Valley, Pennsylvania. She is a current student at NYU Tisch School of the Arts pursuing a BFA in drama. Emma serves as the education director for The Virtual Theatre Co, a nonprofit theatre organization geared towards increasing inclusivity, diversity, and accessibility in the arts. This is Emma’s…
Before enlightenment chop wood carry water. After enlightenment chop wood carry water. ~ Zen Kōan My father’s mother churned the deep litter with her bare hands. Her gnarled knuckles pounded the earth or shooed away clay pebbles as she expertly swooshed gnats with a puff of air out the side of her mouth. Her humming of hymns haltered…
Which reminded me of those middle school dances when we would slow dance to “Under the Bridge” the end-of-the-dance song, the finale the last chance to be close to your crush or watch your crush dancing with someone else under taped up streamers or maybe balloons for Valentine’s Day that turned from blood-red to bruise-purple in the swaying darkness. Or…
My hips are tectonic plates shifting. A heart-shaped bone. In the seams: a spiral vine roots, Fibonacci unravels into feral cliff road. serpentine spine carved from stone I’m strong like the weed is stubborn. Not beautiful but alive. Bent back to an approximation of flower. Reaching. Still. The most scenic roads curve madly, a sweeping dare. Don’t think, drive, don’t…
Fin A small mountain rises from the swell beyond the bow. Grey-black, sleek sheet metal, ready to be scrapped for parts. The hammerhead is hauled onto the deck. A silver hook of fear, pulsing, panicked, twisting like an exposed muscle. Pinned down, she is shorn of her angles, pared to a slender carcass, eel, submarine, then tossed overboard like…
Gaz hadn’t told Claire about the dress yet. Better to wait until they were all at the hotel, when there was nothing she could do about it. No sense searching every bridal store in the state, only to come back with the exact same outcome—no dress. Her mother suggested she use the beaded scarf—that much she had—and match the eggplant…
[This piece contains violent content.] for EL On the morning Lora M. Berty broadcast Doug McKillan’s violent diatribe on the Uplifting Words for the Day program, the people of Merryville left their homes, impromptu, to congregate at the town square. In a mass, they stood before the 45-x-25-foot-tall screen, large enough to show a drive-in movie if the mass media…
It’s 10 p.m. on a drizzly Friday night in Los Angeles. The temperature is in the fifties. My wife, Beverly, and I are home, relaxing on our double lounge chair with a red Scottish blanket draped over us. Cuddled next to us is Ben, the Lhasa Apso we rescued nine years ago. Outside, the backyard lights illuminate the palm trees…
at school from 1st grade through grad school / through four different languages the teachers / didn’t tell me about the weight of time / embedded in your body like hauntings / in this house made of bones and skin // a year lost walking on my complexion / and first footsteps at venice beach / as demarcation of…
photo credit: The Yamamoto Family Chris Yamamoto is an aspiring screenwriter raised in Pearl City, Hawaii. He is pursuing a degree in screenwriting from Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts and will graduate in the spring of 2023. He was also the grand prize winner of the 2021 UCLA Terasaki Nibei Video/Script Contest for a short script…