by Angela Townsend
The trees read each other with a generous eye.
The maple was the real author, as anyone could see. Strong and seasoned, her storm memoirs made the best-seller list. She turned cayenne in October, a refined lady blushing graciously at all the acclaim. I made fairy gardens at her trunk and whispered secrets into the little holes where small creatures delivered her Times. Continue reading
Filed under Nonfiction
by Dana Gynther
That week at the beach, my family began to unravel. Well, not the kids, they were oblivious as children often are, and made of stronger stuff. The teenagers were preoccupied with sneaking out to smoke cigarettes and meet boys while the under-twelves were a typical gang of summertime cousins wrapped up in their own world. None of them noticed the adults. Continue reading
Filed under Nonfiction
by B.M. Owens
Imagine swimming in a pool. No, imagine living in that pool. Imagine that pool being all that exists in the world to you. The pool is your world and your world is 35 feet wide and 12-20 feet deep. You are 20 feet long and swim in constant circles as children bang on the see-through glass tank. High pitched whistles sound and you breach but you’re not sure why. You’re given food. That’s why. You continue your circles, you’re making something. The water laps around the sides. Your fins guide the water with incantations others don’t understand—you don’t really understand them either. You swim and swim and you’re still here, swimming. A whirl pool forms at the center. This is it—You charge toward it, hoping the water sucks you in. That it’ll tear holes into the bottom of the tank—into reality. That it’ll pluck and sweep you into deep waters. That it’ll bring you home out to the Pacific ocean or, at least, drown you. But it doesn’t. The water settles. Your body is stiff as you float beneath the Florida sun. Maybe if you’re still enough the heat will melt your blubber and you can ooze out of here through the drains. The sun only blisters your skin but you don’t seek shade because you already know there isn’t any. This is all there is—this pool is your world. Continue reading
Filed under Nonfiction
by Esteban Rodriguez
I stole a green ball from the ball pit at Peter Piper Pizza. When my mother asked me where I’d got it, I said at my cousin’s birthday party, that it was under our table when we—cousins, aunts, uncles, friends—all gathered at the table after eating and playing and gossiping and sang to my cousin Eloy, wished him another happy year on earth.
My mother bent over with the ball in her hand, thrust it in my face and asked again where I got it, and although I didn’t have a thorough understanding of lying, I knew that the green ball would no longer be mine if I told her I took it from the pit, that while Eloy and his brother Eddie were starting a side war that required at least three ball hits to the face, I saw the roundest and shiniest ball in that pit and stuffed it in my pocket. How no one saw it on me at the table or play area or in the car on the ride back home with the ball bulging from my shorts was nothing short of a miracle. Continue reading
Filed under Nonfiction
by Robert W. Cording
After my brother died, my mother, the most rational person in our family, noticed red-tailed and red-shouldered hawks everywhere. Of the eighteen species in North America, these two are most common. Still, they arrived when she seemed to need them, unexpected gifts. Over the last four years, she has filled notebooks describing flight angles, call sounds, and, what I have the hardest time understanding, how these sightings helped her through her grief. Continue reading
Filed under Nonfiction
Hawaii Pacific Review 