Gina Brillante – Writer. Philosopher. Poet.

We All Go a Little Mad: Psycho

by gina
2024-06-06

“We all go a little mad sometimes” (Hitchcock, movie Psycho). “Oblivion – what a blessing… for the mind to dwell a world away from pain. . . I have no desire to suffer twice, in reality and then in retrospect” (Sophocles, play Oedipus Rex). In order to discuss Hitchcock’s iconic film from 1960, we need […]

In Case

by gina
2022-08-07

In Case You are the shadow shaped from missed moonlight, and those unafraid of your darkness will find a color of beauty undefined, undiscovered. You are the unreachable itch on my back, distracting me from much of life’s apathy. Except you have no such back-scratching dreams. You are the shoulders that grip my traveling eyes, […]

by gina
2021-03-27

Words Without Lightning It’s Christmas. It’s Christmas. So regardless of any present darkness and that which might be close behind, there is conviction. There is longing, there is hope, because there has to be. The whispered blessing draped in sin just might save us after all. Our words without lightening, our actions frail, wisdom still […]

The Unacceptable and The Usual Suspects

by gina
2021-03-27

The Unacceptable and The Usual Suspects Imagine everyone suddenly knew the worst thing you’ve ever done. Now, considering a list of your favorite actors, directors, artists, or entertainers, if I told you that at least half of them have committed a crime, would that change your list? Would there be a sudden shift in your […]

διδάσκω

by gina
2020-05-06

διδάσκω I lost His voice, next to me since death, protecting me from regret, beckoning me to take the chance, to eat the moment, to catch the apple falling from the tree – before it hits me on the head – and take a bite. Now I search, like reaching for a light switch […]

Shakespeare Had Insomnia

by gina
2018-06-18

Shakespeare Had Insomnia This day will never remain as epic or sleepless as it is now, wrestling with my breath into the foggy night of flashing lights and fear. I want the loss to mean something, to change everything. It’s not enough anymore for me to remember it; I want it to remember me. Like […]

Summer Pulse

by gina
2017-09-03

Summer Pulse The night danced with discord between the green impulse of scratching an itch without looking, and the yellow flower you never left on her doorstep. The ladies order libations of innocent oblivion and refined sugar. The men, strong facades and manufactured smiles. All a slightly flat note of disillusionment. You consider the stars […]

Liquid Courage

by gina
2017-07-19

Liquid Courage. It’s working and waiting, grinding and sweating. Potatoes fermented, sugarcane distilled, barley malted — years of fertilization and production. Until on this particular night, at this particular bar, inside this particular glass, the poison is poured and consumed without thought of its past or the future it possesses: yours now, mine now, in […]

Christmas Lights

by gina
2016-12-28

Christmas Lights. The tree glows with Mom and the clink-clink of her bracelets against the wheels of her legs and sometimes her mind. She loved Christmas. The lights hit the world and there is nothing the world could offer that will ever be as bright as lights on a December tree of the past: stuffing […]

Aeschylus

by gina
2016-07-01

Aeschylus. There was a time of younger blood and timeless hearts and stupid-thinking thoughts that you were the only star: a single beacon in the lost night I was allowed to witness. I believed it was you who were the one: the defining color in a colorless world with a history and future equally tainted […]