By Kawika Guillermo
Smoke settled upon her. Every exhale of tobacco residue spewing from her lips embraced her pale shoulders. She blew sometimes forcefully, letting the grey smoke break apart on her elbows. Her skin would reek of it, perhaps for days. She let it seep from her mouth and creep into her eyes, her nostrils, her hair.
By David Salner
After the painting by George Bellows, 1909
A whistle stills the site, hushes
the whine and hum of cables.
Powder settles through the cyan light
into the quiet air of coffee break.
Someone tosses up a thermos,
which he catches in a blistered hand— Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
By Jeremy Griffin
I was with Nosh, cruising around town in the clunky brown pickup his older brother Chad had been forced to give up after his second DUI. The case of Pabst we’d bought off a couple of frat guys was in the middle of the floorboard, already half-empty. This was in early September, a Friday, close to midnight, and my guess was that right about then most of our graduating class was heading out to keg parties and sorority mixers at whichever schools they’d left town to attend. But not me and Nosh. A year earlier we’d been promising athletes, part of the Nix High Gators’ starting line, him a linebacker, me a running back, but now we were just another couple of washouts, prowling the quiet streets of Nix, Louisiana, like a pair of penned-up animals sniffing around for a way out. Continue reading
By Devi S. Laskar
Give me back that moment when you rubbed rouge off my cheeks,
one hand rattling the wheel of your Olds as it began
to sink on the red clay roads, your thumb growing brighter
and brighter as the bloom in my face dissipated
and crows resting atop the telephone wires,
watching, always watching us; your hands shaking
as you counted the change at the toll booth, the sun in front
of us; a highway patrolman’s glaring flashlight
appearing to demand your identification,
the state’s permission that allows someone like you to drive. Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
By B.P. Greenbaum
August 17, 1962
Pittsburgh melted. Carolyn Martin became convinced that, just like a pat of butter in a hot pan, it would soon slide right into Ohio. The heat wave showed no signs of abating, and all the girls at Cane Street House were glazed by it. Breakfast felt atypically quiet; their faces glistened at the table that morning, so many bellies like watermelons. But it was a traditional Friday, fish day, and the day of departure. Empty, Carolyn and Angeline would be leaving.
Filed under Fiction
Hawaii Pacific Review 