by Tatiana Forero Puerta
Mami made me dust
the ghost room as she swept
the kitchen downstairs, washed the fruit-
shaped porcelain dishes.
Continue reading
Cleaning the Ghost Room
The Passing Spring
by Naoko Fujimoto
Inspired by the ninth waka from Ogura Hyakunin Issuhu
Cold rain falls onto blossoms;
fading their color just like her body—
pieces of dried skin and bone,
her long gray hair covers the lineless back. Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
The Rip
by N. Marc Mullin
Jimmy Spins couldn’t spin a bowling ball to save his life and had nothing to do with the spinning of yarns or any such thing. Jimmy Pots had no potbelly, didn’t pot plants, and never smoked a joint as far as I knew. But I, Mighty Dog, once had curls like the poodle on a can of pet food by that name. So Jimmy Spins, our namer of names, got one right.
Spins nicknamed himself and Pots when we were little, and the titles stuck, never sounding as dopey as they seem now. We grew up spending summers at our fathers’ fishing shacks on Pig Bog, off the causeway to Lenape Island, New Jersey. Like our dads and uncles, we became tin knockers, sheet metal workers, monkeying on scaffolds and A-ladders, stringing ductwork through the towers of Manhattan. Spins named me while we worked the World Trade Center. I can still see him writing it in red marker on my hard hat. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
Crow
Winner of the 2015 James Vaughan Poetry Contest
by Nicholas Becher
I found the sketching of my youth
Pieced into the confines of a dilapidated tree house
In the nook of a St. Louis suburb.
Through the scope of a pellet gun
I had fired death into the heart of a crow
That dangled upside down from a parallel branch
For a few brief lingering moments. Continue reading
Travel
Honorable Mention in the 2015 James Vaughan Poetry Contest
by Brian Cronwall
Under shooting stars, the quick commas of night,
a train rolls on. The next depot is in sight.
When will we get there? It’s cold in North Platte;
if you get off at the station at midnight,
you’ll freeze your nose hairs for sure. And if you step out
in Gila Bend, you’ll break into an instant sweat.
The same stars watch over both. We’re not
in either place yet, but we soon could be. Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
Hawaii Pacific Review 