It is Easter morning, one year after Brianna’s life-saving neurosurgery. We are standing in a pew at the congregational church in our hometown, to which we had walked that morning. Long banners hang from the vaulted ceiling of the sanctuary proclaiming Alleluia, and pots of tall lilies surround the communion table. The choir and congregation are mid-song, a big, glorious…
HOW TO MEDITATE drift your skull to lilacs crest your brow with pineapple sage dream rose into your nostrils wake crying butterfly pea and cornflower fill your lungs herbaceous inhale parsley exhale mint rinse your hair with rice water let the dark of your insides deepen plum and charcoal where light won’t reach fade your bruises with buttercup whiten your…
I’m tired how murder follows us how we’re an all too accessible play area for anger’s russian roulette merry go round and how this, patronizing, cautionary life of smiles and apathy for our death waits freer than we ever were sweeping us vagrantly in riptides complacency in a glass of tap water poison in flint from slave patrol city minders…
By Jeni Eskridge In The Leftover Woman, the thrilling new novel by New York Times bestselling author Jean Kwok, two women, worlds apart, come face-to-face with what it means to be a mother and to make impossible decisions. From a small Chinese fishing village, Jasmine escapes her controlling husband and embarks on a quest to find the child she had…
Paul opened the door to the break room and froze: a neon-blue eye stared back at him. The unblinking cyclopean orb belonged to a new coffeemaker. Paul felt his stomach hit his toes. He’d been dreading this day for years. The old coffeemaker had been grimy and scuffed, but it had also been reliable. What’s more, he knew how to…
We go together like loofah and linen— compostable, antimicrobial— soil cake in the gut house, nice parasites with stylet quips, sealing lips from disease. Mutuals suggest we left our dust to mingle— skin cells, hair shed— without banter laughter balm, and yogic twister lip calms. Or maybe you’re the night sun and I’m the fun jungle, mistaking fungal for lunar—…
Three months ago, I was vaping in the tub, leaned back against the tile, submerged my face in the water, and thought: fuck, I’m not cis, am I? My girlfriend of three years, Liz, was playing video games in the living room, out on a mission with her gamer friends in Red Dead Redemption. She took one look at me,…
I hold in my hand a passbook for a savings account my father opened with a $30 deposit on October 26, 1960. You may have to be at least as old as I am now—60—to recognize a bank passbook and remember its purpose. This one looks like an American passport, which my dad had yet to acquire, with a somber…
Dina starts awake to the sound of the phone ringing, and before answering she knows Ken has gone out again. She can feel the absence of him in their shared bed like a cavity, the room still and silent as a forest, and the roaring klaxon of the landline is a chainsaw, teeth biting through living wood. Still, to confirm…
Gianfranco Lentini (he/him) is a NYC-based queer playwright, teacher, journalist, and first-generation Italian American. His plays include Glory Hole (Burlington County Footlighters), happier (A Night of Play), I’m really glad you’re here (The Magnetic Theatre), Katherine & Peter (Torrent Theatre, inspiraTO Festival), Self-Published (Molecule Literary Magazine), You Tell Me (Theatrical Response Team), Okay Walt Whitman (The Coachella Review), and Open (Mini Plays Review: An International Journal of Short Plays). Gianfranco is currently an Adjunct Professor…