Tell your dog, I bite. Tell your Jesus I too have a blood-wet diaper and a tendency to fall in love with stray women at art galleries. I got a hair net for my halo. A bag for my jokes. A side kick who smirks and slaps himself in time to a vicious disco beat our punk drummer makes. Tell…
Sestina After DSM-5 Criteria for Gender Dysphoria It all starts with desire. A burgeoning conviction. Taking what is typical and splitting it in two, lapping up what drips between the experienced and the marked. At birth we come out marked. Screaming with a desire to connect, we emerge between the cause and the conviction. Each breath informs the two and…
We are the California kingsnakes of the Canary Islands. Perhaps you’ve heard the troubling reports. We proliferate out of control, our habitat is expanding, our “densities are through the roof.” The EU has banned our further import. But how did we end up here, unwitting invaders on a volcanic rock in the Atlantic, so far from the San Diego pet…
I am not a merry chaser—I know there is more than one roadrunner darting mountains in wasteland sand. But you had me at I want to be elusive; two cannot run together but here is a burning slice of sun for you to hurdle. And your love set me airborne, a rocket depositing Wile E. Coyote in empty sky, hands…
how we can slice a human mind in two while the skull is intact. lying in the most conspicuous places, white crime usually dresses in business suits and we mistake them for flesh and blood men. as though words create new realities, Zelenskyy, I have my popcorn ready to hear you wax eloquent. i witness you running with adrenaline chiseling…
Brian C. Petti is an award-winning playwright who has been produced internationally by such companies as Headwall Theatre Company, Theatre of NOTE and 5th Wall Productions. Next Year in Jerusalem was the winner of the Humboldt State University National Play Contest in California. Heroines, On The Expectations of White Christmases, Like Drowning, The Love Song of Sidney J Stein, and…
“Pencils come from Pennsylvania.” Blossom Dearie Rotring A drafting pencil never gets dull, But it’s never that sharp, either. Blackwing Many men claim to have God’s pencil Some have his eraser. Others believe God’s pencil has no eraser. Still others believe there is no God So not even an eraser. Not even the small dried out kind That smears and…
“Above all, always be capable of feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the world.” -Che Guevara That summer a walrus was euthanized in Norway, later they built her a statue along the harbor: a marble fallen martyr. Her given-name, Freya, Old Norse for “Noble Lady,” goddess namesake of love and beauty; of war and death. The dangerously…
Lindsey Brown is an award winning New Zealand playwright whose passion for the performing arts started at a young age. Initially a keen musical theatre and improv performer, she then moved into the world of playwriting. She has had plays performed around the world, including London, India, New York, Hollywood, Florida, Atlanta, Sydney, Dubai, Queenstown and Auckland. Lindsey often…
Before I could scoop the meager contents of the plate into one bite—a small pork chop, a spoonful of rice, lentejas, nothing more—a honk sounded out from the busy thoroughfare outside the house. My abuela perked her head up, discerning for the honk amid an endless line of traffic. Another honk. Then another. She sucked at her teeth and shuffled…