By Irena Praitis
Römhild Work Education Camp, 1944
Unboxed from the casket
Of my tailored suit
Everything burns:
The disinfection
The prison tunic
The beatings
The cold
Columbarium
Filed under Poetry
Déaþ
By Irena Praitis
No hood
No spade
No skeletal finger
No ill will
No sweet escape
No justice
Filed under Poetry
I Believe in You (Sketches on the Younger Child)
By Ben Tanzer
From the essay collection Lost in Space (March 2014, Curbside Splendor Press).
1.
Charlie, the junkie one-time rock star on LOST, is a younger brother. In the beginning he is a serious musician, and a good boy, proper, and studious. But that is before he follows his older druggie brother and charismatic lead singer of their band down the road of groupies, addiction, excess, and rot. This shouldn’t surprise us, however. Younger brothers idolize older ones. Older brothers are both substitute parent and friend. They have the wisdom that comes with having lived longer, and they are happy to impart it, right or wrong, to their most loyal audience. Charlie ultimately cleans up, falls in love, does good, and finds redemption. But he still dies on a God-forsaken island off in some magnetic geographical zone that maps cannot track, much less locate. I am hoping for better with Noah.
Filed under Nonfiction
Half Moon
By Dane Karnick
After the Sculpture by Deborah Butterfield, 2013
Not the tethered rock in space
but the same desert
for this horse withering
in unforgiving light
Filed under Poetry
No One Is Looking
by Thomas Christopher
My friend Eddie’s sister, Shannon, was seventeen. She was eight years older than we were. Even though she was hardly around, I always felt her presence whenever I was at his house. Sometimes her door was open and I stole a glimpse of her rumpled bed or some scattered clothes on the floor. But even if her door was closed, simply being near it thrilled me in a way I couldn’t describe.
One day when Eddie was showing me his new football cards, Shannon appeared in his doorway. She was wrapped in a red bath towel. Her honey-blonde hair was wet and her skin flushed pink. For some reason the sight of her bare feet sprinkled with water was exciting. She smiled, leaned her shoulder against the doorframe, and said, “What are you boys up to?” Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
Hawaii Pacific Review 