by Jon Doughboy
In the foyer there’s a majolica peacock the size of a punch bowl shimmering inertly and full, stuffed to its decorative brim with nail clippings and you say, as you open its back to show me, “They’re my father’s, he keeps them, I don’t know why, don’t ask me why, he’s disgusting, isn’t he disgusting?” and I don’t have time to respond because this is the first time I’m meeting your parents and your mom is in my face suddenly, Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
by James Ragan
Beneath the drizzling golden hues of sunlight,
a palm is swaying tall, muscular in its song,
smooth as a kumu hula sidestep, grazing the sand,
or a chanter’s muse waving a song
along the fingers to storied heights, each hand
rolling in air to dance one beat into a pair. Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
by Norman Sakai
Back in 1960 when this story takes place, I was Japanese. There’d been pressure since the war for us to say “Japanese-American” but that idea had never grown legs. For one thing, most of us lived in low-income, polyglot neighborhoods like East Los Angeles, where your race — I mean your real race, not some construct — was the most important thing about you. For another, we’d just spent the war in internment camps. The hyphenated term seemed a little pointless after that. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
by Jill Michelle
after Alicia Ostriker
To be cursed
complained the dog
is to have your mom
home
all day
but not allowed
to move or play Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
by Anne Champion
In East Texas, the vultures’ hunchback stare, starving
and relentless, pierces you like a beak to the gut,
as if they know something you don’t. They circle in flight,
stalk from telephone poles, glare in a way that accuses: Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
Hawaii Pacific Review 