by Bénédicte Kusendila
The sheets hung out to sweet perfection,
the bed covered by a quilt of hearts.
It is okay to be girly again,
to foreshow what I want.
The drunken dance of welcoming tourists;
they’re already my friends. The psalm of
the classy suit shouting, “I don’t know! I don’t know!”
in the street, in his mobile phone. Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
by Stewart Manley
Some things hold, some let go.
Sunlight streams through the hapu‘u,
Warming the cool stillness.
A breeze of reminiscence,
Lasts only to stir forgotten embers,
A time of young dreams. Continue reading
By Payton Cianfarano
Two-hundred-forty-seven hours ago you stopped talking. I should have known then that something was wrong, but this was the fourth time in one-hundred-sixty-eight hours that someone had warned me you were going to stop breathing. After the third time I stopped worrying.
Two-hundred-forty-four hours ago I heard my mom crying, a sign that I should find my way to where she was and see what was going on. I found her wrapping herself around you so tightly that I’m surprised what you had left of a body didn’t break.
Filed under Nonfiction
by Simon Mermelstein
(first line from Freud, via Emily Berry)
Filed under Poetry
by Cameron Conaway
Well over half of the white bathrobe trailed across the red hotel hallway carpet, but 9-year-old Singkto flailed on, bouncing into walls as though he were a plastic bag blown by the wind. How he waited for the man whose arms were wrapped around him in the bathtub to fall asleep before he pinched his nose and slipped under the water to gently escape their weight, how he carefully waded through the warm water and willed it not to ripple, how he used the broom handle that pained him earlier to quietly unhook the robe from the door hanger, how he stepped out into the main room, opened the creaking door to freedom and looked back at his wet footprints—none of it mattered now. The heartbeat in his throat pulsed with the adrenaline of next, that monster of uncertainty made of equal parts terror and crisp mountain air. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
Hawaii Pacific Review 