All men will resemble one another in the way they use their feet. But no one can tell what any given man will do with his hands. . . . The hand is the direct connect with man’s soul. . . . When a free spirit exists, it aches to materialize in some form of work, and for this, the hands are needed. Everywhere we find traces of men’s handiwork and through these, we catch a glimpse of his spirit. ~Maria Montessori My father stands before a worktable in a small greenhouse that adjoins the living room. Nearly six…
Thin, light-etched yellowish-orange lines where her eyelids met. Red Rothko squares stamped her eyelids. Bright white light framed Chuck’s goggled face the moment before Jen opened her eyes. She breathed in smoke, ash, particles, and dirt. It hurts to breathe: searing pain. It was May 25, the start of a new year. The blanket wrapped around her quickly became too much, heat rising, sweat coming. She leaned forward. At her feet, an aerial photograph of Merriwether’s intaglio in all of its fluorescent fury. The ground: cracked concrete and Em’s chalk drawings. Next to the paint can kiln with three small-plugged…
The rain has come to ionize the alien frontier, calling out storms over a smeared earth. We sit in varying stages of anesthesia staring at the long sky, the secondhand measured in lives. We disciple new religions with the sun and the moon. We abandon them as they dismay. We survey the rim of heaven with our elastic eyes. Rivers of rock cramp down the divine slide. A world of slants and angles, temples and monuments. Here are the pyramids of America. Hard love flowers in the stoic ground, mixed blood pushes up strange vineyards among ancient runways. Here we…
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 first publication and is incredibly thankful for this opportunity. You can find her on Instagram @emma.cort.
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 with the occasional fuck!—five seconds between f and k—when bitten by a fire ant. Her Southern drawl translated the four-letter curse into a lengthy abysmal revelation yet Granny Carrie seemed immune to the sting never breaking rhythm with her hands.…
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 maybe there weren’t decorations at all just that tired PA system and the CDs we brought from home. Someone’s older brother would play DJ press play and watch the bodies rock methodically in the deep echo next to each other…
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 die—trace your hands along this map this improper bony land. each vertebrae a trail leading further in Sky, asphalt, rock, sea smash together, break apart. Skin covers bent bone this grand costume, hair, makeup: splendor …
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 color as close as she could to an overpriced sheath dress from the fancy mall. Keep the problem quiet until the last possible second. After three of Claire’s weddings, her mother knew the bridezilla’s triggers. The wedding was at the…
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 a surplus torpedo. On the dock, a thousand triangles are laid out to shrivel, a distant sun squeezing them dry. The rest hang from apartment balconies like bunting. At market, the fins are amber flags, half-mast. Layered across the stalls…
[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 hadn’t been banned twenty years prior “for the sake of public health.” Together, they watched their neighbor, Doug McKillan, shout vile, horrific words at them. “I want to bash in Jill Henderson’s head with a baseball bat. I want to…