: About Me

Michael Bettencourt is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. His A QUESTION OF COLOR won an Ostrander award in Memphis (TN) for Best Original Script in July 2005. IN THE FORT chosen was a Selected Script by Inner Voices. In 2004 he won Boston Theatre Works' BTW Unbound 2004 competition with his full-length ESQUINA. He won the Maxim Mazumdar New Play Competition at the Alleyway Theatre in Buffalo with his play A QUESTION OF COLOR. He has also won the Eric Bentley New Play Competition at The New Phoenix Theatre in Buffalo with TRANSLATION and the PlayWorks 2001 competition of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education for A QUESTION OF COLOR. His children's play, MACBETH'S CHILDREN, won the AATE 2003-2004 Unpublished Playreading Project and the Sonoma County Repertory's Best Youth Play award in September 2002, and his short play CLICK won Best Play in the Turnip Theatre's 7th Annual 15-Minute Play Festival (April 2001). DANCING AT THE REVOLUTION (about Emma Goldman) has been produced by Playwrights Forum in Memphis (August 2001) and the Theatre Cooperative in Somerville, MA (November 2001). He is a member of Scene4, an online community of theatre professionals, for which he writes a monthly column (http://www.scene4.com). He has an MFA in Dramatic Writing from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. All of Michael's scripts are at http://www.m-bettencourt.com As always, thanks to his "prime mate," Maria Beatriz.

Creative Writing > Poetry Poetry: Drought

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DROUGHT It's been in all the news, it's been all the news. Montage: grey crepe of leaves in surrendered fields grey arcs of skin in surrendering faces. The wish prays for rain; the talk is dust. I am sitting on the top step of the porch. In front of me the lawn grizzles. The sun drains the sky to bronze hot and flagrant. It is noon. The air smells branded. I am snarled on the glittering nailheads of the porch boards, my face grisailled. What the fields are I am becoming. I watch the horizon. It sits in my eyes like a live coal. Days pass; the porch boards cool, then heat, smelling like sta...

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