For the safety of everyone, attendees are required to wear a mask at all times in Stage Werx.
Everyone will be asked to show proof that they’ve been vaccinated plus an ID.
The health of attendees is of prime importance to us.
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Don Reed
The Extra-Terrestrial & The Police
…and the Texas Highway patrolman’s very first question when he walked up to my luxury rental car window was, “Where’d you get this car from?” Not, “Do you know how fast you were going?” Or “License and Registration” — But rather, “Where. Did. You. Did. You. Get. This. Car. From?”
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Kenny Yun
A Trump Exorcism
“I did not make you sick” stops Kenny and forces him to gaze at the Asian American woman on the poster. He’s walking through Chinatown, lower east side of New York. It’s April 4, 2023. He left the courthouse few blocks away, where minutes ago Trump was just arraigned.
Like many Asian Americans during the pandemic, Kenny feared being attacked in public, and worse, what could happen to his elderly parents. Hate crimes rose over 300%, spiking every time Trump said “kung-flu” and “China virus.”
Damage done and continues. Kenny feels helpless in front of the poster. What can he do about the negative energy still plaguing him? His ancestral heritage has shamanism and Catholicism. Kenny’s favorite poet John Milton was an Anglican Hebraist. What do these traditions have in common? Exorcists.
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Pearl Ong
I Will Survive
I am trying to work out an outfit for a drug run. Maybe this tweed jacket, pressed black shirt, black jeans, a Parker pen in the breast pocket. My car is a Plymouth Valiant in faded gold and pink bondo, with the stuffing coming out of the back seat. This makes the probability of getting stopped for “Driving While Poor” quite high. I’m hoping to offset the car’s appearance with a doctoral candidate get up. A bit of cognitive dissonance can’t hurt.
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Kristen Cosby
The Rule of Threes
The second time Kristen drowned she was sixteen. She was living alone on a beach in Maine where her father had left her. Or maybe she asked to be left and her father enthusiastically agreed. One night during a gale, her boat — her only connection to civilization — got tangled in its outhaul and floundered, and she had to strip and wade into the cold, thrashing harbor to save it. She became hypothermic. She’d been starving for about a month. When the water got too deep and too cold to withstand, she lay back and let her feet float up, and thought: what if you just stop fighting?