100 Major Dramatic Questions for Plays of Praise
by Justin Maxwell
Already the Decline
In real life, I put my head in a machine. How is this brain different from all other brains? My transient, shifting butterfly-shape of a landscape in its final stage – possibly shrinking, almost definitely frayed — but already on the downswing. Wired into the surface, the metallic clatter of pulsing attachments, steel stimulation, determines levels of insult. Pay the… Read more →
E-S-O-T-A
“Whatever happened to telephone poles?” Daniel said, after Allison handed him another poster, which he palmed against a tree. She worried about this—attaching the MISSING posters to trees. She thought people would find it trashy or inconsiderate. Most likely both. She shrugged. “I guess satellites, or whatever, have mostly replaced them.” The day so far, an early morning in August,… Read more →
Nepotism
If only your mother had been a waterfall or a strawberry bush, a flock of albatross with sun woven into their veins. If only your father cried, even once, or saw a mug of coffee perched in moonlight and exclaimed that’s beautiful enough to paint. Haven’t you realized? Everything you did not inherit went to someone else. No matter what… Read more →
Word Play, by Anna Warfield (a slideshow)
Psychological Evaluation Through Shadow Puppets
First, make a bird. Very well. Its wings gently grasp black. Does it sing to you? Is it trapped or freed by your hands? Why has it not flown away? Dorsa together, curl the left, fingers forward, a rabbit appears. Will it survive the winter? Can it elude the slender outline of a coyote’s jaw? Shape a heart, does its… Read more →
Ode to Pomegranates
as winter arrives delicate seeds falling through crimson-stained fingers
Running Water
A pregnant cat licking its fuzzy belly in a warm drizzle -Richard Wright In my shaking hand: a pee-soaked strip of plastic. At my feet, bare and cold on the February floor: a cat. We look at each other. I’m pregnant, I announce. I’m thirsty, she replies without words, turn on the faucet so I can drink. At the sound… Read more →
Tadpoles
hundreds the size of nailheads spawn in what shallows our banks contain darklets in mudclouds clay my brother stirs in fistfuls to sieve through between spaces of fingers here we are stillwater disturbances the canoe slicing into canebrakes the mobile of lures caught twisted in the limbs of trees we shade in we the waterbugs we the herons who stand… Read more →
Let’s Steal A Kiss
These are the days of wonder when dusk runs a thousand miles to meet me waking up in the morning; red and blue clouds pile up behind the mango tree where I hid during the war to escape the barrage of bullets cascading down our roof, where bats gathered in the hot air, stealing the flowers and our breath and… Read more →