by Dan Leach
Then came the summer
the ponds went dry
and everyone’s grass turned
the color of bone.
Streets became graveyards
and even the pool
with its pale green promise
yawned in the distance
like a forgotten church. Continue reading
Heat Wave
Filed under Poetry
Stick with that Kind of Wreckage
by Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor
Write poems that peek at this mess
like dawn light from curtains of cloud,
or the red throated pouch poems
that perch on tree carcasses just
after a storm when begging sounds
are misunderstood as singing. Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
Winged
by Natalie Gerich Brabson
Pressing my nose against the smudged windowpane, I spot a gleaming government building topped with proud angels. Wings outstretched, they stand triumphing against the skyglow. Our bus tumbles on over cobblestone streets, and soon, we round the bend and pass the Atocha station. The station’s glass panes reflect thousands of traffic lights. The bus lurches up the ramp. Squinting against the light, I crane my neck to catch a last glimpse of central Madrid for now. We’ll spend most of this week at the school. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
Flyover
by Ranjiet
I divide your city into two
pomegranate halves.
Jammed in bricked boxes
seeds bleed in pairs.
I am a crack in your thinking. Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
From Fire, Sans Brolly
by Matt Gulley
It was raining under October outside the museum. Gabrielle and her date shared a cigarette in the cold. Cigarettes will burn at different rates depending on variables such as the density of the tobacco, the composition of the filter, and the strength of the vacuum applied by the twin bells of the lungs to the wet cavernous tower of the mouth. In the cold, this was not a leisurely pleasure but an attendant duty performed in the shelter of a high rounded corner of limestone at the top of the pavilion steps. As the ember drew to its concluding, Gabby’s date relayed a feeling from much earlier in the day, awaking in sweat having felt something real bad had happened, but failing to remember what, and while making conversation later with an acquaintance about a movie, not being able to parse if some part of that familiar-feeling discourse about the film had been a portion of a previous conversation with someone else, or if it had been part of the dream not remembered, and what a spacious sort of modern feeling that was. Yea said Gabby. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
Hawaii Pacific Review 