by Gail Tirone
A crowd formed on the beach
awed and aghast
as the gray mass surfaced
battered by wave after wave
until the surf with a grotesque belch
heaved it onto the shore Continue reading
Ocean’s Lament
Dawn of a New Day
by Jan Walker
O`ahu, January 2000
A soft silver moment crosses the sand on Kailua Beach as sun burns through clouds at the horizon. Turquoise swaths slash the azure sea, a rose blush dusts the sky. I’m running at water’s edge, aware of sharp sand and chilly water, and a sense of Dad beside me, reassuring me that leaving my mainland home, moving to Kailua to care for Aunt Meg, is the right choice for this tangled time in my life.
My head turns, as though by Dad’s hand, to view the Ko`olau Mountains, veiled in morning haze, where he’s conjured an image of the Rain Shelter in Lyon Arboretum. Dad’s never been to these islands, never seen that shelter, but there it hovers as he says, in my head, Go there, Eve. Go now.
The Loneliest Man in the World
by John Grey
Nobody knows me here.
No friends.
I’m totally alone.
Then you call. Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
Still Life
by Franz Jørgen Neumann
The drives to Clayfield used to take only a few hours, back when Beth and Mira visited their husbands once a month. Now, nearly at the end of Dennis and Dylan’s eight-year sentences, neither woman lives in the same town anymore, and they must rise early in order to manage the trip to Clayfield in a day.
Beth picks up her daughter-in-law before dawn, the sky an ocher-to-indigo gradient that reminds Beth of the interior of a decorative bowl she keeps on her dining table. The ceramic piece holds peeked-at bills, house keys, coins and buttons, a matchbook, and whatever else can be emptied from a pocket. Here, that same gradient is uninterrupted, at least in the eastern sky.
Filed under Fiction
They Were Lying Naked
by Dmitry Blizniuk
(translated by Sergey Gerasimov from Russian)
They were lying naked in the dark,
parts of their bodies jumbled;
they were lying blissful, dissolved in each other. Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
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