By Ann Minoff
my sister never calls
sends an e-mail instead
I will be out of town on such and such date
sometimes love, her name
sometimes not
we live ten minutes from one another
I don’t visit her, she doesn’t visit me
Sometimes Not
Filed under Poetry
Tidal Wave
By Lee Patton
Frank rowed toward the dock his father used, tucked into a wooded river bend behind the town harbor. It was way past six, but the dock was deserted. Where was his dad?
The seagulls kept acting strange. A whole flock had just followed his rowboat against the incoming tide, wailing. When he passed the mooring basin’s log posts, every single gull landed atop each one, like a formation, going dead quiet.
Filed under Fiction
To a Sycamore, Lately
By Meredith Davies Hadaway
I cannot know the hundred
springs when tiny leaves uncurled
to grasp the sky, the summers
of humid bark and peeling days—
I know nothing of your life, though
I watched it end with ropes and saws
Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
Beneath a Country Sky
By Angela Nishimoto
Chiyo, standing under the large banyan tree, flung her hands about her face, trying to keep the mosquitoes from alighting. Henry stood at a distance and gazed off down the unpaved road. He became aware of his wife’s irritation, so he turned and made his way back to her. She looked up at the threat of rain. Whether passing mauka showers or downpour, rain was always possible here on the windward side of O`ahu. He reached her just as she swatted a whining little beast, leaving a sooty smudge of mosquito remains centered on her forehead.
Filed under Fiction
Animals
By Irena Praitis
During the evacuation march, a 12 year old Ukrainian boy was shot to death one night when he asked, desperately, to leave the cellar where we were all housed, to relieve himself. Römhild Work Education Camp, 1945.
The boy pleads, and I remember mother
whipping me with the vacuum cord.
She’d caught me making farting noises
with friends. Shame! She raged,
You’re not an animal! Hide your dirt,
or you’ll be buried in it—
gentility designed to save us
that cost us our lives.
Filed under Poetry
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