by Emma Lee
(Kyiv, December 2023)
A fir tree stands in a pot outside an apartment block,
that has one wall crumpled into rubble.
Branches have been decorated with sparkly cobwebs, Continue reading
Out of Place
Filed under Poetry
Covet
by Emily Schulten
I lied when I said that it all went back to normal.
It’s like the knife is pulled from my belly every time I see a friend’s belly grow round, see her gentle palm rest on the notch the growing child—the growing child—makes between her breasts and the new life.
And then I’m hemorrhaging all over again. It spills and pools at my feet and I walk around this way, smiling, doting, congratulating, arms full of yellow dahlias, pink hydrangeas, and red anemones of celebration, all the time trying to pretend it’s not puddling, to figure out how to clean the blood from my feet, from my soles where it embeds into the crevices, the lifelines of my footsteps, how to hide the tracks on the carpet, the tile, the pavement that look like my alive son’s ink-stamped hospital prints. Continue reading
Filed under Nonfiction
The Last Dive
by Arthur Ginsberg
To enter the world of the deep
is a return to the birthing pool–
a palette of colors evanescent
as cuttlefish, as you descend,
letting nitrogen seep into
your bloodstream, the crunch
of coral in the beaks of parrotfish
like a stone-grinder in your ears. Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
Punchline
by Jeffrey Howard
The jokes I remember, I cannot deliver well, unlike my sons who prefer the knock-knock variety (“Boo who? Why are you crying, stinky man?”), or my brother-in-law, a learned astronomer, who has dead-panned to me not once but twice: “I thought I was going to be the poorest one in the family, then I heard my sister was marrying an English major.” Continue reading
Filed under Nonfiction
The Fawn of You
by Ayden Massey
when the morning glories have unbowed their soft skulls,
may you rejoice in the child of things.
may you return to the warm radius amongst the high boughs Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
Hawaii Pacific Review 