Category Archives: Nonfiction

by hipacificreview | 08/21/2014 · 10:57 am

The Beaches Of

by Johnathan Harper

In the divide of pavement and sand stands a sign with a stick-figure drowning under white waves, the words: “Beware of Riptides.” Parents keep their children close, distract them with scarping shells from the strand, the salt grime wrapped to their fingers. Two brothers sit in ankle deep water, the one that’s seven has his arms wrapped around the waist of the younger to anchor him. They try to tug against the tide, where the ocean sucks them in, inch by heaving inch. Continue reading →

Something L.A.

by R. Dean Johnson

Tom doesn’t know I’ve been avoiding him. It hasn’t exactly been a conscious thing. There wasn’t an argument or a last straw; I’ve had no epiphany or change of heart. It just sort of happened.

Really, we’ve always been semester friends—hanging out when classes are in session, rarely doing much together on spring, winter, or summer breaks. But now we’ve graduated, both with business degrees from a school that has a great reputation for engineering. There were a couple graduation get-togethers, high fives and handshakes, bottles of beer and the occasional shot, the grin and requisite, “We did it.” Then, nothing. A perpetual break. Continue reading →

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by hipacificreview | 06/05/2014 · 9:58 am

Chasing After Papang

By Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor

My mother is two years younger than my eight-year-old daughter when the Japanese attack the Philippines. She is outside in the early December sunshine, playing with her five- and three-year-old sisters and my grandfather’s sister. Somewhere inside a clapboard house nearby, my grandmother rubs her pregnant stomach, her mind on what time her husband will come home from his daily patrol. A common day for Wardville, the small neighborhood where dependents of the Philippine Scouts and US Army live and sleep. Continue reading →

I Believe in You (Sketches on the Younger Child)

By Ben Tanzer

From the essay collection Lost in Space (March 2014, Curbside Splendor Press).

Charlie, the junkie one-time rock star on LOST, is a younger brother. In the beginning he is a serious musician, and a good boy, proper, and studious. But that is before he follows his older druggie brother and charismatic lead singer of their band down the road of groupies, addiction, excess, and rot. This shouldn’t surprise us, however. Younger brothers idolize older ones. Older brothers are both substitute parent and friend. They have the wisdom that comes with having lived longer, and they are happy to impart it, right or wrong, to their most loyal audience. Charlie ultimately cleans up, falls in love, does good, and finds redemption. But he still dies on a God-forsaken island off in some magnetic geographical zone that maps cannot track, much less locate. I am hoping for better with Noah.

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