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Hawaii Pacific Review is an online literary journal based at Hawaii Pacific University.
by | 06/16/2016 · 7:30 am

Sabino Canyon

by Scott Bradley Smith

After the rain, the desert smelled of sage and creosote. Mike Brazos pawed the scree, hauled himself onto a ledge. Hands on knees, he gasped and wheezed in the breaking mist. He knew he’d been capricious—a rattler could have gotten him anytime he reached overhead. At the very least, he could have ended up with a handful of cholla spines. But he had arrived at this promontory where, for one last time, he could survey Sabino Canyon as it curved like a fat leg up and into the Santa Catalina range. Continue reading →

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by | 06/13/2016 · 8:28 am

Cartilage

by Mehrnoosh Torbatnejad

I scan the cartilage, bending tissue blue

through a New England coast, flexib-le
mon-itor of ocean martyrs, snack options; black
tips the prey over, I slip under, basking

in soft spaces of rows and rows of teeth, great,
white razors, all replaceable, like the nurse Continue reading →

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by | 05/30/2016 · 9:49 am

Winter Woods

by Deirdre Roche

Our car was the size of a toaster, bought out of environmental convictions and a lack of funds. The hill to the cabin was steep and muddied from snow that fell the night before.

“We could push,” Paul said.

I put the car in neutral. Together we mounted the first steep climb. We panted and held our knees. Our breath came out in white puffs.

“How are we gonna get back down?”

“I think it will be easier in the other direction,” he said. He might have smiled but his face was covered almost completely by his scarf. Continue reading →

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by | 05/26/2016 · 9:10 am

I Declare This Room a Volcano

by John A. Nieves

Some games we played weren’t
about competition. The goal
was for everyone to win, like when
we’d throw pillows around the room

and name the floor lava. No one
tried to push anyone else in. The idea
was adventure. We would risk
imaginary immolation to reach Continue reading →

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by | 05/12/2016 · 7:47 am

Whirling Disease

by Kelly Sundberg
(Originally appeared in The Denver Quarterly Vol. 49, No. 3)

Before:

We piled into a car, four girl-women in our early twenties, a tent, a cooler full of food, and plastic baggy full of magic mushrooms. The car wound along the tight curves of the river, canyon walls rising sharply on either side, sunlight filtering through the glass.

We stood in the middle of a stream, skirts tucked up around our waists, passing a fly rod between us and casting a line. The line flicked forward, hesitated gracefully in an arc before landing softly on the water. The cold stream funneled around us. We broke the arc of that glassy water. A silver glitter danced by my feet. A trout. It broke the surface, creating a circle on the smooth water, radiating into more circles, then slipping away soundlessly. Continue reading →

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