Category Archives: Fiction

by hipacificreview | 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 →

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 →

Fantasy Fatherhood

by Mark Brazaitis

My marriage was a mistake. She was a nice girl, and she thought I was a nice boy. After a year and eight months, we decided to end things. No harm—well, some harm (I was unfaithful sixty-two days after our wedding and remained so)—no foul.

I was twenty-six-years-old and a bachelor again. Free. Or so I thought. What I didn’t count on was my ex-wife, three months after our divorce, telling me she was pregnant. Toward the end of our marriage, we’d made a certain mournful—and, as it happened, inadequately protected—love.

Continue reading →

Grackles

by Mollie McNeil

Despite her daughter-in-law giving her the stink eye, Muriel remained composed, holding her fork high as she swallowed the last bite of Claire’s too rich beef bourguignon. She resisted yawning while the strangers on either side of her prattled on about a school fund-raiser, and instead watched her son, Tom, flashing his whitened smile and smoothly refilling his guests’ wineglasses with a quick twist of his wrist. Tom was a dentist, good with his hands, and always seemed to know just how much novocaine was needed in any situation. Muriel cleared the table before excusing herself from the party, hugged her son happy birthday, and exited the room, she hoped, before anyone noticed her mounting irritation. Why couldn’t Claire just throw a backyard picnic for Tom instead of these tiresome sit-down affairs? A grinding headache had descended on her. Plus her shoes pinched. She slipped them off in the dim hallway and headed toward the bathroom in search of aspirin. Continue reading →

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by hipacificreview | 03/10/2016 · 9:38 am

Mustard

by Monica Drake
(from her new collection The Folly of Loving Life)

Our dad, when he taught forensic science, said it was the art of looking at a problem and tracking backward, analyzing the smallest pieces to find out where things went wrong. When he actually did lab work, it usually involved investigating tampered with or otherwise faulty pre-packed food. He’d analyze unknown objects found in a box of cereal, a can of soup, a carton of orange juice. He’d determine if an item was molding mouse feet, somebody’s fingers lost in an industrial accident, or only an ordinary clump of burned cereal ingredients that had fallen off industrial machinery into the Wheatie-O’s mix. Continue reading →

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