by Michael Mark
I imagine asking them by the power tools
at Home Depot or while their wives wait in line
to pee at the mall –
how they got their hip hitch, that spastic limp.
Some let me lean close enough to hear the suck
and pop of bone pulling
Ishmael
Filed under Poetry
Salvation
by Marlene Olin
South Miami Senior High, 1986.
As soon as the bell rings, Luca runs through the empty corridor, finds the custodian’s closet, and pees into a pail. Next he slips outside and tiptoes to class. His eyes scan every shadow and every hidden door. The hall monitor glances in his direction. A ceiling camera zeroes in and whirrs.
Filed under Fiction
Self-Portrait as an Albizia
(Falcataria moluccana)
by Emily A. Benton
It’s true, I will
grow anywhere.
My mother
could attest.
Filed under Poetry
The Lion in the Gardens of the Guenet Hotel
by John Coyne
In the final days of our in-country Peace Corps training in Ethiopia, we had a
celebration dinner at the Guenet Hotel in the Populari section of the capital, Addis Ababa.
The Guenet Hotel, even in 1962, was one of the older hotels in Addis Ababa. It wasn’t in the center of town, but south of Smuts Street and down the hill from Mexico Square, several miles from where we were housed in the dormitories of Haile Selassie I University. While out of the way, this small, two-story rambling hotel, nevertheless, had a two-lane, American-style bowling alley; tennis courts; and most surprising of all, an African lion in its lush, tropical gardens.
Filed under Nonfiction
Jake the Snake
by Matthew Schmidt
ate a gigantic rat with a tail
long as his body.
belched loud as his rattle.
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Filed under Poetry
Hawaii Pacific Review 