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
Young Marriage
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
The Hawaiian Alphabet
by Colleen Kam Siu
Hapa is a Hawaiian word
that means part,
but more recently, half.
In 1870, Hapa
meant part-Hawaiian
and part-Chinese laborer;
the latter imported
for their bitter strength, eager
to escape broken promises
in Kwangtung,
not yet knowing
that’s the material
that makes a man
who calls himself Master.
Filed under Poetry
Valhalla, Georgia
by Stephen Hundley
Crocodiles are easy. People are harder.
–Steve Irwin
In 2006, Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray. The Telegraph reports that he was stabbed hundreds of times by an animal roughly six-hundred-pounds and seven feet across, wing to wing. His cameraman said he passed peacefully, in shock. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
A Heart (In)Action
by Kalehua Kim
Today someone sings about a broken heart.
Tomorrow I could sing about a broken heart.
The song on the radio can’t tear me like tissue
the way your grunts and groans shred my heart. Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
Hawaii Pacific Review 