by AE Hines
No fuzzy face
resting on furry paws,
no whimpering from the floor.
Give me a fury,
with rusted metal whiskers
and nostrils heaving flame,
something nether-worldly and gnarled. Continue reading
Give Me a Dog Named Outrage
Filed under Poetry
Paper Calendar
by Darryl Halbrooks
“When was the last time you talked to your dad?” Jennifer asks.
“I don’t know, maybe five years. Something like that.”
“I know you don’t want to, but maybe you should call.”
“I’ve seen grown men pull their own heads off rather than talk to Dad.”
She ignores my oft-used Monty Python line.
“He’s in the vulnerable population you know.” Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
Night Music
by D. Dina Friedman
As my mother lay dying, we sat around her bed listening to a Bach Brandenburg Concerto on a no-name discount CD.
“Look, she likes the music!” Aunt Elissa gushed. And sure enough, something in my mother’s body had loosened—a small slackening in the muscles of her mouth, which continued to draw a rattled, but rhythmic and regular breath, like the pulse of counterpoint fueling Bach’s twisted knot of repeating melodies. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
Midway
by Peter Krumbach
—for Ron Salisbury
Ron says in a lifetime we each swallow fourteen spiders. That’s about a spider every five years, I say. It’s 92 degrees. We stand on the sidewalk between Luna’s Psychic Reading and Happy Head (Foot Reflexology and Massage). Ron has been married four times, almost killed twice. The last few weeks he’s been contemplating building a canoe. To remind myself, he says, what birch-bark and cedar ribs can do for the spirit. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
Reduced to Black and White
by Carol V. Davis
After a week in Siberia
my world is shrinking.
I gaze out the window
weighing choices: Continue reading
Hawaii Pacific Review 