by Mandira Pattnaik
When you feel neglected, you should devour your husband instead of starving yourself, instead of wondering what ruins you haunt: says mother when I tell her about a slap, a chipped tooth, about brothers-in-law ogling, about mysterious cold beef and fermented rice beer in the husband’s bag, Continue reading
by Ujjvala Bagal Rahn
In his den, Marty forgets to put things away.
Wrappings and boxes fall unnoticed to the floor,
Amazon purchases rest on his desk,
as he turns to the computer screen.
Mal Nińo never has to put anything away
because his hands are always empty, Continue reading
by Megan O’Laughlin
One of these days, I will find a dead body on this beach. It’s written in the stars, or at least in so many true crime stories: woman walking dog finds dead body on neighborhood beach.
Every morning I walk the new puppy to our small neighborhood shore where he sniffs seaweed while I hunt for sea-glass. I walk because I’m tired and my depletion comes from something that has a lot of terms: secondary trauma, compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, all terms for various forms of caregiver exhaustion, definitions for intense weariness. I used to believe such symptoms indicate how I’ve given too much, but perhaps it means that the needs outweigh any possible gifts. Continue reading
Filed under Nonfiction
by Caroliena Cabada
At dinner, the napkin ring
cinches the cloth into a fan. Continue reading
by Jona Whipple
She kneels at the edge of something, ragged dirt at the mouth of a hole you can’t see. Her arms encircle the bundle like this: One high around the shoulders, the other around the legs, palm hidden under the white bag. It is tied at the top, a crude knot like what I make with the handles of grocery store bags, a shredded tuft. She turns her face into the top of the bundle, where there is the shape of a head, a curve, the shroud pulling softly under her arms. Her lips move, she whispers into the primitive shell of the ear, she speaks softly through the cotton, her hands move, one rubbing softly at the shoulder, the other patting gently at the back of the legs. She rocks side to side, patting, whispering, her arms around this child in a hold like a figure eight, infinity, a hold recognized by mothers worldwide as the safest, the most secure. Continue reading
Filed under Nonfiction
Hawaii Pacific Review 