By David Salner
After the painting by George Bellows, 1909
A whistle stills the site, hushes
the whine and hum of cables.
Powder settles through the cyan light
into the quiet air of coffee break.
Someone tosses up a thermos,
which he catches in a blistered hand— Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
By Devi S. Laskar
Give me back that moment when you rubbed rouge off my cheeks,
one hand rattling the wheel of your Olds as it began
to sink on the red clay roads, your thumb growing brighter
and brighter as the bloom in my face dissipated
and crows resting atop the telephone wires,
watching, always watching us; your hands shaking
as you counted the change at the toll booth, the sun in front
of us; a highway patrolman’s glaring flashlight
appearing to demand your identification,
the state’s permission that allows someone like you to drive. Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
By Ann Minoff
my sister never calls
sends an e-mail instead
I will be out of town on such and such date
sometimes love, her name
sometimes not
we live ten minutes from one another
I don’t visit her, she doesn’t visit me
Filed under Poetry
By Meredith Davies Hadaway
I cannot know the hundred
springs when tiny leaves uncurled
to grasp the sky, the summers
of humid bark and peeling days—
I know nothing of your life, though
I watched it end with ropes and saws
Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
By Irena Praitis
During the evacuation march, a 12 year old Ukrainian boy was shot to death one night when he asked, desperately, to leave the cellar where we were all housed, to relieve himself. Römhild Work Education Camp, 1945.
The boy pleads, and I remember mother
whipping me with the vacuum cord.
She’d caught me making farting noises
with friends. Shame! She raged,
You’re not an animal! Hide your dirt,
or you’ll be buried in it—
gentility designed to save us
that cost us our lives.
Filed under Poetry
Hawaii Pacific Review 