by M. Anne Kala`i
I.
Mother didn’t teach me how to garden.
She taught me to pack up a house
after the water turned off,
then the lights. Continue reading
Emancipation
Filed under Poetry
The Blanket
by Michael Brasier
Her toys—every little figurine and stuffed animal I bought—rest in a cardboard box collecting dust, not touched since her last visit three months ago. While watching The Twilight Zone, once her and her mother’s evening tradition, I find five small socks—cheetah patterned, sweat-hardened sock calluses—under the recliner. She hated the way socks felt and would sneak off without them. Continue reading
Filed under Nonfiction
Emigrant
by Kalani Padilla
The cabbages will survive at 24 degrees fahrenheit
whether they tolerate or desire the frost
is their secret.
Filed under Poetry
Rodeos
by Isaac Rankin
Before the nurse can draw back the bay curtain, you cup your hand and yell at a whisper, Your beard makes you look like Jesus! It’s not you but the valium talking, winding it’s way through your veins, preparing your body for a microscopic speck soon to sail for a distant shore.
Filed under Nonfiction
Grief Island
by Amy Fleury
Into the circle of chairs at the coffee shop
or church basement the newly bereft,
bedraggled and numb, are hauled ashore
by those long ago wrecked, those who know
the ropes, handing out Styrofoam cups
to be bitten and clutched. The coffee
isn’t bad for such a sad, uncharted place.
Salt water inundates us, so we pass around
the tissue box like a conch shell. All loss
is ours, we who are stranded together,
each with our own stormy story to share.
What unlikely castaways we make—professor,
pipefitter, nurse, veteran, and even undertaker.
Filed under Poetry
Hawaii Pacific Review 