by Phyllis Carol Agins
When their son died, the one in the middle of three boys, Charlie thought: I can still say the boys because two remained. After the funeral, covered dishes sat on the front step with notes that read, we’re here for you. Then the oldest one went back to college, and the youngest traded school activities for a job that would keep him out of the house until midnight, as if he understood that their house was filled only with the dead. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
by Robin Littell
Mina’s biological parents left her on the porch of an Ohio farmhouse in the middle of a thunderstorm. No note. Just Mina in a car seat with an empty diaper bag. The farmer’s wife called the police, and Mina was taken to a foster family that lived next door to me who eventually adopted her and chose her name, a name that means ‘love’ in German. Her foster parents said that everyone who met her fell under her spell. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
by Kaylie Saidin
Charlie says he saw the kraken but with no proof, he’s a fool, rotten-scented as the sea foam that coagulates beneath the hull. We’ve been on the Nightingale for one month now, sleeping in the red-twined hammocks, sloshing seawater all over the deck, gutting fish and slicing our fingers, eating stale bread and sucking on lemons. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
by Misty Yarnall
“Do you want to light it?” Uncle Mark pinches the top of a Chinese lantern. He pulls a cigarette lighter from his jean jacket pocket. My mother and aunt sit in Adirondack chairs on the back deck. Smoke and sparklers choke the air. Continue reading
by Leo Coffey
I never told you this before, but we knew about the pills. Jacob, Uncle Tommy, James, all of us. That night you came inside to rest. The rest of us were outside shooting fireworks by the barn. It was the Fourth of July and the air smelled like hotdogs and burnt wax. I drank one too many Mountain Dews and had to pee so bad I ran inside with one hand gripping my crotch and the other holding a Roman candle. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
Hawaii Pacific Review 