by Gene Twaronite
I stare at the photograph
of a bare-chested 18-year-old
trying to look brutish,
crouching as if
ready to pounce,
projecting his masculinity
lest the image fade. Continue reading
Remnants
Filed under Poetry
Trees of My Life
by Angela Townsend
The trees read each other with a generous eye.
The maple was the real author, as anyone could see. Strong and seasoned, her storm memoirs made the best-seller list. She turned cayenne in October, a refined lady blushing graciously at all the acclaim. I made fairy gardens at her trunk and whispered secrets into the little holes where small creatures delivered her Times. Continue reading
Filed under Nonfiction
If I Were to Taste You Again
by Tara A. Elliott
It would be all almonds, the sweet, cocooned belly
of the melon, berries rupturing black against my tongue. Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
Young Marriage
by Andrew Payton
In our first apartment, above the small
plaza where schoolchildren rehearse
their patriotism, and a fruit seller scatters
pigeons with her knife’s wooden butt Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
Nooshin and the Forgotten Coast
by Samira Shakib-Bregeth
After she got over her second marriage, Nooshin left Georgia and drove through the Emerald Coast, where her two friends, Brit and Shahin, rent out their vacation homes all year—except for the low season in September when the hurricane season peaks—to Apalachicola, Florida. Nooshin wanted fresh oysters from Oyshack. Chris, who she met in college, wrote about the place east of Highway 30A a month before he went to Rome to find himself.
Twenty years ago, instead of marrying Chris out of college, she married his best friend, Jake, now her first ex-husband. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
Hawaii Pacific Review 