by Gary Lai
Ezra Pound fought with all of his might but
in the end he put a huge, ugly ai
in the middle of his big fat poem
that showed anything but love for China.
The book’s typesetter doesn’t speak Chinese
and used a font that is ten times too large. Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
by Corey Pung
Coming of age in Samoa, twins Masina and Lanuola believed their father to be an Olympian. This was the story their mother told: Natia had met Toussaint when he was a merchant marine picking up cocoa beans and copra by the ton and dropping off crates of furniture, clothing, paintings and books to the American consulate in Pago Pago. Natia was leading a dissolute and unrewarding life at the time, running orders and scrubbing dishes in a Europeanized cafe within walking distance of the docks. Local boys didn’t thrill her, she said. Her daughters were at the age they simply thought boys were vasti–stupid–and didn’t catch her drift. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
by Steph Spector
It doesn’t matter whether you’re on a hundred yards of turf stamped with the seal of our alma mater, or standing on a bluff overlooking a creek, cinnamon whiskey on the brain. It’s the curl-bend-whip of your wrist that makes them fly so fast and so willingly. It’s something like a turntable needle when it kisses a record, crackles, and sings. Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
by Steve Coughlin
He was the bedroom, the Black Sabbath poster thumbtacked to the wall. He was the unmade twin bed and dirty sheets my grieving mother refused to wash. He hovered outside the second-story window. My dead brother watching as I turned out his cracked lamp. Continue reading
Filed under Nonfiction
by Mia Sara
My gangling pale
bedroom-eyed
boy child,
telling me lies
as I drive downhill.
“They need me,” he says.
Self-starved
distressed damsels,
the bloated buddy,
dumped again, Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
Hawaii Pacific Review 