Author Archives: hipacificreview

About hipacificreview

Hawaii Pacific Review is an online literary journal based at Hawaii Pacific University.

Self-Portrait with Nissan and Failed Romance

by Connor Watkins-Xu

I’m fingertips interlocked on the console
like an oyster. What is our pearl?

I’m an embrace that halts your heart and
I hope to be the vessels of wine-aged love. Continue reading

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Filed under Poetry

Seek and Ye Shall Find

by Shawna Ervin


Lost

1984. Scott Hamilton won the Olympic gold medal for men’s figure skating in Sarajevo that February. He trained at a rink near where I lived with my parents and younger brother. I was nine, in third grade. I hadn’t paid attention to figure skating before, and probably hadn’t paid much attention that year either. My parents were conservative Christians. TV—like the radio, movies, alcohol, smoking, dancing, and anyone outside of our small, fundamental world—was to be feared and avoided at all costs. Continue reading

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Filed under Nonfiction

Lahaina, August 17, 2023

by Dr. Edward J. Kame`enui

My Hawaiian blood is from Hilo,
the Waipio Valley, and Kamuela
where gobo grows vertical
in soft brown dirt.
Not Lahaina. Continue reading

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Prayer (1998)

by Justin Lacour

The first cold night in south Texas

I split an omelet and hash browns

with a girl so high she thought

Waffle House was shaped like a bowl Continue reading

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Cup of Hindsight

by Deborah H. Doolittle

I am reading my roots
like grandma’s tea leaves,
having sipped that bitter

brew, having tipped the cup
for likenesses to ogham
or runes or any glyphs Continue reading

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Filed under Poetry