by Jake Greenblot
Mom had just killed a dog in the dining room. An arc of arterial blood had splashed against the glass double doors of my father’s special, never-to-be-touched-if-you-want-to-continue-sleeping-indoors oak cabinet, and a pool was forming on the floor around my younger brother Chris’s Superman cape, red on red. So much blood, and that red so impossibly bright. Too much to be inside one dog, it seemed. Memory can magnify these things, I’m sure.
Filed under Fiction
by Dick Bentley
On this hill, in this clump of trees at the edge of the golf course, I sit with the wind swaying the daisies. Now distant, Bernardini’s milky eyes are focused on the golf ball as he bends down before putting. He studies the ground. He analyzes the lie, the turf, the wind. Bernardini is the President of the Health Group that has denied me treatment. The treatment is too experimental for my tumor, the bean counters said. So I am to die.
Filed under Fiction
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
Filed under Poetry
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
(Falcataria moluccana)
by Emily A. Benton
It’s true, I will
grow anywhere.
My mother
could attest.
Filed under Poetry
Hawaii Pacific Review 