by Steve Meador
is ankle deep
in many spots
even when thin ice forms
fingers from the wrist of a bank
it is safe to walk
to the sandy center of the river
and stand
in the trickle and tink
When the wind dies
close your eyes
Listen up
Can you hear
horse hooves pawing in gravel
Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
by Martha Clarkson
I’m sitting in a swivel seated task chair with no wheels, waiting to discuss my transfer (and promotion) to Category 5 Light Investigations. I believe the chair is circa 1960. It is September, and the leaves outside are oranging. It is my season of conflict – the beauty of the colors, the inevitable gloomy harbinger of winter.
“What did you do all summer?” my boss asks. He runs his life by the school system, behaving like a fall teacher, even though I’ve been working all summer. He never starts a conversation with the meeting’s reason.
“Umm, well, I drove with the windows down,” I say, straightening my posture, “to lash out at the hermetically sealed world we live in.” I sidelong glance the inoperable windows of our office.
“Well, surely you must’ve done something more than that,” he says, slightly accusatory in tone. “I mean, where did you go in the car with those windows down, you know, on vacation, or to a swimming hole?” Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
by Karissa Knox Sorrell
Socks hanging on a line.
Metal tins with red labels:
Mutton cutlets. Irish stew.
Roast Veal. Roast Beef.
Three penguin skins
on hooks in the corner.
A navy vest on the floor.
A single gray glove against a bed.
Two pairs of boots on a food crate. Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
by Kate LaDew
She sees things. Little men in little top hats riding little horses with Abraham Lincoln beards. The little men and the little horses. She’s thought about telling someone but how can she with her brother the way he is: seeing dead babies and rat infested corpses and Jesus dissolving on a cross. It would be like making a joke about dead babies or corpses or Jesus. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
By E. Kristin Anderson
Dear God, make me a bird. So I could fly far.
Far far away from here. –Jenny, Forrest Gump
I draw on these sounds for
some sense of reality—windows
are glass and I see my slack-jawed
reflection there.
I flick through albums, imagine
fingers on cardboard jackets,
lace gloves that must be removed
to handle these tomes.
What is a book if not a vehicle
for life? Americans lay in the street
and look for meaning in the clouds. Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
Hawaii Pacific Review 