by Peter Krumbach
—for Ron Salisbury
Ron says in a lifetime we each swallow fourteen spiders. That’s about a spider every five years, I say. It’s 92 degrees. We stand on the sidewalk between Luna’s Psychic Reading and Happy Head (Foot Reflexology and Massage). Ron has been married four times, almost killed twice. The last few weeks he’s been contemplating building a canoe. To remind myself, he says, what birch-bark and cedar ribs can do for the spirit. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
by Ken Nishizaki
(Translated by Toshiya Kamei)
I don’t remember who started calling him “Starman.”
Was it Kondo who worked at the bar? Was it Shorty, a self-proclaimed drummer who quit the band after a month?
One day at an izakaya, Starman told us he’d come to Earth from another planet in a distant galaxy. Since then, he’d been known as Starman. This is his story. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
by Cammy Thomas
Orbiting above the earth, spinning
in solitude and fear, watching
earth loop by in its interstellar
loneliness, caught in my spacesuit,
air running out, can’t stop the wobble— Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
by Julie Jones
Pele’s Dolphins: When lava flow reaches speeds in excess of 28 kilometers per hour within a channel that has developed standing waves, oblong clumps of lava may be seen to leap out of the channel like dolphins at play. The conditions present for this phenomenon to occur indicate radical subsurface shifting of tectonic plates in the volcanic region on the order of three meters per day which allow massive new globules of magma to jet upwards into an existing volcanic edifice. Pele’s dolphins are the first observable evidence of this underlying though undetectable activity.
Source: F. Ka`uhane and D. Sepúlveda. “Detecting Magma Sources from Observable Phenomena: New Insights from Kilauea.” Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, vol. 365, no. 2, pp. 126-137 (2021).
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United States Geological Survey Form 1021B
Personnel Management Report
Subject: Danissa Sepúlveda
Submitted by: Agna Grímsdóttir
Date: July 20, 2018
It is with deep regret that I am compelled to submit this report to the official file of Dr. Danissa Sepúlveda. I had recruited her only six months previous from the Chilean Ministry of Geology and Minerals on the belief that her experience with the Andean Volcanic Belt might spark fresh insights here. Her field notes related to the incidents in question are attached as Appendix A to this report, and her video logs have been archived on the H:/ drive. However, if any failure is found with the handling of this affair, responsibility should be laid on me. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
by Esteban Rodríguez
Because every computer would die,
and software would become a relic
overnight, your father packed a survival kit,
bought extra water, canned food,
cartridges for a shotgun he feared
he’d have to use, warning of asesinos,
ladrones, of a desperation that would lead us
to do things we thought we’d never do.
Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
Hawaii Pacific Review 