Brittany MacKeown
Bio
I also go by my middle name, Renee, but you can call me about anything
Stories (32/0)
Mackinac Island
The weather was perfect. That doesn't happen often in the middle of June up near the border of Canada, even if the summers are theoretically milder. Humidity makes eighty degrees feel like ninety, and you can hardly sweat because the air is already so thick with moisture.
By Brittany MacKeown3 years ago in Wander
Neon Green
The blanket slumped off the side of the mattress. Sleeping in the house, especially when their old fan was broken, was impossible. Dry dusty heat simmered under the lead-lined ceiling, and Hara felt like a soup ingredient, boiling in a big pot. She was splayed out on the blissfully empty mattress, trying not to think about how little she had slept on her few precious hours off.
By Brittany MacKeown3 years ago in Fiction
Rat Island
White crosses sunk into the iron-gray earth. A frostbitten wind skipped along gunmetal waves, carrying with it sprays of salt and the stench of turpentine. It shook the sign staked into the mud: Little Falls Cemetery. Though, it was less a cemetery and more of a lawn. White picket fences be damned.
By Brittany MacKeown3 years ago in Humans
Rich White Feminism
About six months ago, I wrote a short confessional article about a friend I drove to the grocery store, and I missed the point of that entire experience. Recently, I've started reading Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall, and I achieved some clarity about where the feminist movement really needs to divert its attention.
By Brittany MacKeown3 years ago in Viva
Laundry
Somebody on the street is playing the familiar solemn cords of “The House of the Rising Sun” on a scratchy guitar. The sound floats through the trundling cars and to the beat of pedestrian footsteps, wavering and soulful. I am hanging laundry on the clothesline above on the second floor of my apartment, and Claire is talking to me from the next apartment over, leaning out the window like she is searching for the guitar player. She is a year older than me, but no one on the street would notice. Maybe that is why she cakes on lipstick like it is as common as dandelions.
By Brittany MacKeown3 years ago in Humans
Reflection
My friend lives alone in an apartment a block from where she works. She’s a single mother, freshly separated from her husband, and she struggles to find a babysitter, to quit smoking, to pay her bills. It’s a common story: a young woman trying with bitten-to-the-nub fingernails to scrape out a living.
By Brittany MacKeown4 years ago in Humans