Kahahiaka

by M.G. Martin

I telling
All the tings you going see
Waking under hala trees
Last night’s ants finshing
Up an ʻōpala feast

The Kīpahulu sea beyond the ʻaʻā
One conflation of liquid blue cotton
Candy and da sparkle kine Colgate
From small kid time Continue reading

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Sunday

by Gregory Pōmaikaʻi Gushiken

Māmā inhales Sunday
A Benson & Hedges Luxury Pack
Her chest, the billowing Pacific
Each breath an ocean river
Filling the soft space
Left by fleeting fathers
With tender carcinogens and tar
Sealing sandy sores Continue reading

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Old Apple Tree

by Howard Sage

Through June and half
July, static apple
green outside my window
caught my morning eyes.
Then (I don’t know how) pink began
to tinge and turn the
sour green. I should
have smiled as pink looked
through the leaves at me, Continue reading

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The Big Bad Brown Swiss

by John Coyne

I was seven or eight years old when I got so drunk at a family party that I ran out of our farm house, down to the barn, and attacked our big brown Swiss cow with a broom.

I don’t remember this act of animal cruelty, but the next morning, when I woke from a stupor, my mother—as well as my brothers and sisters—told me in detail how I had impishly sipped booze left in cans and glasses on the dining room table until I was so intoxicated my suppressed rage at one of our milking cows exploded into violence. Continue reading

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Dear Astoria

by Natalie Homer

Have the skeleton ships succumbed
to barnacles & rust, the salt wash of the sea?

And the little A-frame named “It’ll Do”—
is it still there, safe in the hemlock?

Mild-mannered Pacific,
I wanted so badly for you to be home. Continue reading

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