by Lannie Stabile
Phil liked to do things the old-fashioned way. When his lawn needed water, he spent hours standing outside with the hose nozzle, waving it back and forth like a wand in the palm of a slow and steady wizard. It was more personal than the automatic sprinkler his ex-wife Dorene had wanted to install. More intimate. And he was certain his grass appreciated this special attention and therefore grew lusher. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
by Helena Pantsis
Uncle Dick took a swig of the whiskey, then passed it along to Dad. We felt the house tremble above us. Jeremy stood tall at a corner by the far side of the stairs, reaching his hand up to the crack in the door we’d attempted to stuff with loose packing foam and tape.
“I can feel a breeze,” he said. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
by Greg Walklin
They were waiting for us. Branches and leaves shifted in the wind, like the ashes were dancing or swaying to a hymn of praise. Because it was nearly noon, none of the Beatrice Home for Disabled Adult’s brick buildings cast shadows. Below the lot where we parked, the valley of soybeans and corn swelled and sighed. My parents opened the car door for Beatrice. Much later, when I entered college, the University campus would strike me as familiar, in a way I could not describe, but I would eventually realize that Avery Hall reminded me of the Home. Continue reading
by Natalie Gerich Brabson
Pressing my nose against the smudged windowpane, I spot a gleaming government building topped with proud angels. Wings outstretched, they stand triumphing against the skyglow. Our bus tumbles on over cobblestone streets, and soon, we round the bend and pass the Atocha station. The station’s glass panes reflect thousands of traffic lights. The bus lurches up the ramp. Squinting against the light, I crane my neck to catch a last glimpse of central Madrid for now. We’ll spend most of this week at the school. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
by Matt Gulley
It was raining under October outside the museum. Gabrielle and her date shared a cigarette in the cold. Cigarettes will burn at different rates depending on variables such as the density of the tobacco, the composition of the filter, and the strength of the vacuum applied by the twin bells of the lungs to the wet cavernous tower of the mouth. In the cold, this was not a leisurely pleasure but an attendant duty performed in the shelter of a high rounded corner of limestone at the top of the pavilion steps. As the ember drew to its concluding, Gabby’s date relayed a feeling from much earlier in the day, awaking in sweat having felt something real bad had happened, but failing to remember what, and while making conversation later with an acquaintance about a movie, not being able to parse if some part of that familiar-feeling discourse about the film had been a portion of a previous conversation with someone else, or if it had been part of the dream not remembered, and what a spacious sort of modern feeling that was. Yea said Gabby. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
Hawaii Pacific Review 