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, …
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…
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…
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…
Toni Ann Johnson and I were in the same MFA program but not at the same time. We met over email fourteen years ago when we both came to the defense of a mutual friend, and we bonded over our protective instincts for friends. As we got to know each other, we started exchanging work and sharing notes, and life…
It was a standard if not cliché motel bathroom, and Mom had been in there a while. In August of 2001, we’d found ourselves at a Days Inn for the weekend—Mom, my sister, and I—despite her losing custody of us six years prior. We were one hour outside of Pittsburgh, in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, though home was even farther, just over…
When the bombs come, we’ll be happy ghosts hiding from the giant spiders, our bodies no longer aching from bad wiring, that thing we thought was a good idea that one time and took months to recover from. When the world becomes translucent glass, outshining the jealous stars, and we finally feel how substantial shadows are from the inside out,…
Brynn Hambley (she/they) is a queer and disabled playwright, theatre artist, devising artist, theatre educator, podcast host, and freelance writer based in the New York City area via New Jersey. She earned her BA in theatre arts from Gettysburg College and her MFA in theatre from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work explores loneliness, disablility, queerness,…
Marin County 1992 From the couch, my parents give me their full, undivided attention. Dr. Groszmann arranges her thick blonde hair in front of each shoulder, crosses one leg over the other. She nods from her armchair, gives me her you-can-do-this expression. I shuffle three pages of notes, hands trembling. Eyeing the cassette recorder to make sure it is revolving,…
Elaine Maikovska is an attorney and writer/playwright living with her husband in Petaluma, California. Her plays have been performed at the Redwood Writers Play Festival. Her writing has appeared in the Argus Courier, The Medical Liability Reporter, and in several anthologies, including 95% Naked, edited by Daniel Coshnear, Vintage Voices, a Redwood Writers publication, and in Beyond Distance, and Crossroads,…